


Second Chance

by Aryllis (Amaryllidinae)



Category: The Lost Boys (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Magic, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Doppelganger, F/M, Family Loss, Non-Graphic Violence, Occult, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Time Travel, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:06:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23316607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amaryllidinae/pseuds/Aryllis
Summary: After a strange meeting with a fortuneteller, Felicia finds herself far away from home and thrust into a dark world of vampires and the occult that she thought only existed in the movies.
Relationships: David (Lost Boys)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

IT FELT LIKE YEARS had passed before I finally—slowly—came to, consciousness creeping back over me like the gradual rising of the tide. For the longest time, I simply laid in a sleep-drunken haze, unsure of who I was, where I was, when I was, or even _what_ I was. Because even though I registered—somehow—that was alive, I felt completely disconnected from everything around me. Instead of a complete person, I was merely a spark of a thought held inside of a jumbled collection of splayed limbs, each disparate piece of flesh and bone connected to me but not really ‘mine’. That is to say, I could _feel_ that I had arms and legs and hands, but moving them— _using_ them—was beyond my comprehension. And even if I had the capacity to want to move, I simply didn’t have the energy to; I barely had the will to blink, I was just so _tired_. It was all I could do to lay completely still and stare up at the sky through heavy-lidded eyes, marvelling at the stars and counting them like so many sparkling sheep that threatened to woo me back into oblivion.

 _‘You need to wake up,’_ a voice outside of my subconscious whispered, the ethereal and familiar sound slicing through the wordless and seductive call of the glittering expanse.

“Why?” I heard myself whisper, though my voice was as distant and detached as the faraway galaxies that sparkled before my eyes. Had I really spoken? Or had I just imagined speaking?

Did it matter?

 _‘Because you will lose yourself,’_ the other voice answered as I drifted ever closer to the stars, reaching out to touch the sky as if it were the tangible and impossibly still surface of a pond.

“But it’s so perfect… So beautiful,” I murmured absently, enthralled by the millions of tiny diamonds that stretched out in every direction. The more I looked at the sky, the more I wanted to touch and hold each little spark, each speck of life that burned in the darkness. I wanted to feel the heat of those distant suns and know the power of the solar wind they created. The universe _called_ to me, begging me to join it and become a part of it. ‘Just let go,’ the stars whispered mouthlessly. ‘You’re _so_ tired…

… It will be _easy_.’

For a moment, I hesitated. Something sinister was lurking here, my intuition screamed soundlessly. And the more I thought about it, the more I could feel something dark hiding just beyond the bright and distant lights that had blinded me. It wanted me—it wanted _everything_ … As I paused, I knew that I should be afraid, but I was too exhausted to fight; I just didn’t have the will to resist.

‘Let go,’ the stars called again. ‘Just let go…’

Surrendering, I thrust my hand forward towards the sky.

 _‘You cannot come back from there,’_ the outsider whispered just as my fingers collided with the plane of the universe. But at my touch, the beauty of the cosmos fell away, instantly sucked into the oblivion that raged—that had _always_ raged—just behind the perfect façade. Like a grotesque mockery of a living thing, the great darkness writhed and shifted onwards in every direction, spreading into and beyond infinity with such awe-inspiring power that I was struck dumb. The darkness was everywhere… and it was ravenous. Startled, I retracted my hand sharply and cradled it against my chest as I watched the undulating leviathan before me viciously and repeatedly twist over itself. As I hesitated in shocked awe, I noticed that, where I had vaguely registered my body before, now I truly _felt_ it. My fingers, which had previously seemed apart from me, were so cold that they ached and, suddenly, I was afraid to look at them… And yet, I did.

Where I had touched the great dark, it now clung to me like frigid tar. Panicked, I tried to shake off the icy contamination, but that only made it worse. Crawling up my arm with purpose, the heavy nothingness snaked and swelled upwards, winding its way towards my face with chilly determination as if it intended to consume me. Frantically, I tried to scrape my body clean with my free hand, but all of my strugglings were to no avail: the sentient gloom seemed to thrive on my panic, flowing upwards ever-faster—and now on multiple fronts. Wherever I came into contact with the freezing, matte sludge, it spread; both of my hands were now blanketed in it and it clung to my chest where I had cradled it. Horrified, I watched the squirming mass expand over my body and knew, if only in that instant, that this was nothingness—this was _the_ nothingness that absorbed all the light and sound and warmth in the universe. This was _the_ nothingness that swallowed life. This was the nothingness that would swallow _me_.

“No! I’m not ready yet!” I screamed at the advancing void, desperately clawing at it with clumsy fingers made all the more useless from the cold that came with the sludge. It was a dead cold that seeped into my bones, flooded my lungs, clawed at my throat… It would be mere seconds before it and the dark overtook me, winding into my the very fabric of my soul to silence me. Forever.

 _‘Then wake up,’_ a voice outside of myself commanded.

o-o-o-o

“Come _on_ , Felicia,” Rachel insisted, tugging on the rag I held as if she was a puppy playing tug-o-war. “You’ve been here by yourself for two days.”

“I’m on ‘vacation’,” I fired back with a sharp tug on the rag. Rachel wouldn’t budge.

“Fine,” she allowed, still pulling the dirty little towel forcefully towards herself as if it would inspire me to get to my feet. “But just because you’re not working doesn’t mean you can sit in a garage all day. You need to _do_ something.”

“I am doing something,” I grumbled before letting go of the rag. Rachel stumbled back a step, stopping herself just before collided ass-first with a large, red tool chest. She glared heavily at me.

“With _other people_ ,” she clarified exasperatedly as she threw her hard-won prize directly into my face. “Namely me. And Sean. Your friends. Remember us?”

“Yes, because you won’t let me forget,” I teased impishly.

“Burn!” Sean called from the end of the driveway. Rachel and I looked over at him in unison. He was leaning, arms crossed, against the hood of his old, yellow Dodge Neon, but made a point to wave when he noticed us looking.

Rachel sighed with exasperation, her limited patience already running thin. “Flic,” she complained, trying her usual and last-ditch ‘mother-hen’ approach, “c’mon. I know this is a hard time of the year for you… Spending some time outside in the sun might make you feel a little better—especially if you’re with Sean and me.”

“My mom put you up to this, didn’t she?” I asked flatly, eyeing my friend closely. Rachel was a petite thing, but she was by no means small: her personality filled in the gap left behind by her small stature. She had a pleasant, round face, soulful brown eyes that picked up the copper colour of her hair, and a healthy smattering of freckles right across her button nose.

“Of course not!” Rachel protested. I could always tell when she was lying because she would scrunch up her mouth into a tight-lipped pout.

I rolled my eyes and picked up the rag in my lap before standing. Rachel squared herself up to me, looking every inch the little terrier in the yard who thinks it’s a Great Dane. “Rach, please. I appreciate the invite… It’s just, I feel like I should be alone right now. My mom doesn’t get that, so I understand why she put you up to this, but—”

“—It wasn’t _all_ your mom’s idea, Flic,” Sean interjected as he sauntered up the driveway and into the shade of the garage. Tall and lanky in every way, Sean had earned his family nickname of ‘Bean’ (though Rachel and I never called him that; he didn’t like it, though mostly because it didn’t rhyme with his name). He had a narrow face, sharp green eyes, and a gentle smile that always reminded me of the Friendly Giant. “She just asked us to spend some time with you,” he clarified when I rolled my eyes at him. “It was Rach’s idea to go to the midway—just like we always did when we were in school. Your bike looks like it’s brand new, by the way; your dad would be proud.”

“Thanks,” I murmured looking down at my gleaming Harley. I had spent the better part of two days working on it, just like Rachel had said. I always kept it in perfect condition, but considering the time of year, I felt a certain sense of obligation to get it looking showroom spotless.

Rachel sighed sadly, the heaviness that was suddenly in the air reeling in her tenacity a bit. “Flic,” she said kindly, “I know you’re sad. You have every right to be… Sean and I only wanted to let you know we’re thinking of you. I guess I just thought that, maybe, if we went out to have some fun and act like kids for a bit, it might help to make today a little easier to bear. Your dad wouldn’t want you to be holed up by yourself. And, besides: if you clean your motorcycle any more, you’re going to rub a hole in it.”

No… He wouldn’t have. “I guess you’re right,” I hesitated. “I just—we haven’t been to the midway in like ten years. I don’t even know what there is to _do_ there anymore.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, Flic,” Sean laughed. “Rach has it all planned out.”

“Of course,” I laughed. Rachel always had an agenda for everything we did together.

“Yes, I do,” she sniffed, pretending to be more offended than she was. “And if it all turns out to be a bust, I thought we could just go back to my place and watch some movies. I need to _properly_ break in my new copy of From Dusk Till Dawn seeing as Sean let Pepper chew up my other one.”

Sean groaned and leaned back against the tool chest behind him, inciting Rachel to poke him in the ribs. “How many times do I have to tell you? You _said_ she could play with it, Rach.”

Rachel glared up at Sean, looking every inch as threatening as her Chihuahua (which was, surprisingly, very scary: Pepper may have been a tiny, little thing, but she was definitely a Hellhound in a past life). “You just asked if she could ‘play frisbee’,” she snapped, her tone half-playful, half-serious. “You never said with what!”

“But Pepper’s so little,” Sean countered mischievously. “A real frisbee would have been too big for her!”

“You could have at least used that copy of Love Actually my aunt gave me,” Rachel fumed. “I hate _that_ movie!”

“Enough,” I groaned, drawing out the vowel sound of the word as I walked towards the back of the garage to wash my hands in the sink. Rachel and Sean fell silent, their friendship still completely intact; the two of them argued often, but it was never serious.

“So, you’ll come?” Rachel asked hopefully after I began drying my hands.

Casting another look at my motorcycle, I sighed heavily with indecision. On the one hand, I did want to go spend time with my friends: the idea of acting like fools for a few hours, not caring about anything other than what to do or where to go next was appealing. The past two days had been heavy, but today was worse… And even though I felt like I should be alone, I didn’t really want to be; my dad wouldn’t have wanted me to sit on my own with my grief. On the other hand, though, I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to go and have a ‘good time’ on a day like today. It just didn’t feel _right_ … But Rachel looked so excited—and so did Sean. “Sure,” I muttered. “It’ll be fun.”

o-o-o-o

If you haven’t guessed already, my name is Felicia—well, Felicia Kristen Rhys—but my friends call me ‘Flic’. By all accounts, I’m pretty unremarkable: I’m a twenty-seven-year-old, brown-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned, average-height, clumsy, med-school drop-out, bartender who also happens to give guitar lessons (mostly to kids). I coach community gymnastics on Tuesdays and Thursday evenings before taking a late shift at work, have a mean right hook, and was born and raised in the Canadian prairies. My mom’s name is Mallory and my stepdad’s name is Christopher (‘Chris’ for short); we get together every other Sunday for supper and see each other on birthdays and holidays, but that’s about it. I live alone in a little studio apartment downtown with my kitty, Sabbath (he turned nineteen this January, so he’s more of a ‘cat’, but you’d never know it from how he acts—the little shit). The only really _interesting_ things about me are probably that I ride a motorcycle (during the summer, ‘hooray’ for long Canadian winters), have ‘too many’ piercings (as my mom puts it), and am a bit of a film buff (horror and occult are my favourite genres). Other than that, I’m pretty normal… I mean, I lost my dad when I was ten, but that’s nothing to brag about. Though it does explain why Rachel and Sean (my best friends) decided it was necessary to drag me out to ‘be with people’ on the midway.

I realise that begs for a bit of an explanation, so please bear with me.

Every summer where I’m from, the city puts on a giant, week-long festival in July with everything from concerts to livestock shows to fried scorpions to classic midway games and rides. Hundreds of thousands of people attend every year and, once upon a time, Sean, Rachel, and I used to go, too. It was a bit of a summer tradition when we were in grade school: our parents started taking us in elementary and, until we started university, we kept going on our own. Now, none of our parents ever taken credit for the idea, but I’ve always believed that incorporating the midway into our summer was my mom’s way to try and insert some happy memories into a hard time of the year for our family. Regardless, the yearly pilgrimage was always a bright spot in my summer: Rachel, Sean and I would trek to the midway to eat ridiculous foods (both in amount and substance), go on the rides, and just be silly. Eventually, we started swapping in concerts for the midway games and haunted houses for the rides, but we would always get together for at least a day to just have fun. As I said, though, life eventually got in the way; we stopped going to the midway the year I turned eighteen—which was fine, the three of us still spent time together in other ways between papers and tests and labs. I hadn’t even really thought about going to the festival in a long time I had been so wrapped up in dealing with my life. Which is, to say, that it was nice to be back amongst the lights, sounds, smells, and energy. It was nice to act like a kid again for a few hours.

… Well, for the most part, anyway.

Now, don’t get me wrong—the _day_ went great. Even though I was hesitant to go, Rachel, Sean, and I ended up having a fantastic time: the weather was perfect, we didn’t have to wait long for any of the rides, and everything we ate tasted just as good as—if not better than—I remembered. Things just kinda… Fell apart once it was time to head home.

“So,” Sean sighed contentedly. “Are we ready to leave? It’s eleven-thirty and we’ll be getting kicked out soon—but we should be able to find a restaurant that’s still open. Denny’s is always an option.”

“How can you _possibly_ be hungry after everything you’ve eaten?” Rachel demanded of our tall, skinny friend. “You’ve eaten more food than Flic and I put together; you should be throwing up.”

“I’m a growing boy,” Sean smiled before sticking his thin nose in the air, pretending to be offended. “I have to eat.”

Reaching around tiny Rachel, I poked beanpole Sean in the gut. “All of that is going to go right to your hips, you know.”

“I have tricks when it comes to maintaining my girlish figure,” he teased back.

I rolled my eyes. “Sure you do. Let’s head back to Rach’s to digest and watch a movie. I couldn’t eat any more food if my life depended on it.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Rachel grumbled as she rubbed her stomach. “And, besides, Pepper probably needs to go out; my roommate is definitely at work by now.”

“Let’s hurry back then,” Sean muttered, disappointed that we wouldn’t be going on a late-night gastronomical adventure. “We wouldn’t want to keep the demon-spawn waiting.”

“Pepper’s not demon-spawn; she’s just extra sassy around you because you bug her,” Rachel sniffed indignantly as we slowly made our way back in the direction of the parking lot. The rides and game stalls were starting to close; where there had been light, sound, and life all around us during the day, now the midway was dark, quiet, and empty. It was eerily reminiscent of the fair in Carnival of Souls (the classic one from ‘62, not the shit one from ‘98) and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, even though I’m not easily spooked.

“Well,” Sean allowed impishly, “they _do_ say people get dogs who are just like themselves…”

“Then thank Christ _you_ don’t have a dog,” Rachel jabbed back.

“This is why I like cats,” I laughed as we rounded a corner that would bring us towards the main gates.

That was when I saw it.

During the course of the day, thousands of people had been at the midway. So many, in fact, that you really couldn’t see much of anything unless it was something tall—like the sign for a ride, a banner for a booth, or some idiot on stilts. The crowd hid anything short (like children, garbage cans, and the elderly) until you quite literally tripped over it (… I’m totally not speaking from personal experience). That was why, thirty minutes before the grounds closed for the night, I saw the little wooden sign that would have been invisible earlier.

“Oh!” Rachel squealed when she saw the tiny hand-painted sign, grabbing Sean and me by the arm before we could run away. She proceeded to tow us both over for a closer look.

As I said, it was a small sign. Standing at just under one metre, it was a folding-panel type affair made from two pieces of wood that had been stained a dark, chocolatey brown and hinged together. Large, gold cursive text advertising ‘Melany the Witch’ was scrawled on both sides above small red arrows pointing to the left. Chained to the sign was a little glass lantern with a candle burning inside, the light the small flame gave off even more eerie than they dimming carnival lights behind us.

I knew what Rachel was going to say before the words came out of her mouth.

“We _have_ to go see her!” She pleaded, bouncing up and down with excitement. Sean and I shared a knowing glance.

“We don’t _have_ to do anything,” Sean groaned as he tried to detach Rachel from his arm. Her fingers wouldn’t budge.

… Here we go again. “Rach, really?” I sighed wearily. “This will just be another phoney like every other psychic, medium, or ‘witch’ you’ve ever made us see.”

“They’re not fake,” Rachel pouted obstinately. “Besides, we’ve hardly done anything that I wanted to do today; you two _owe_ me this.” Even though that wasn’t completely true—Rachel had literally made a list of all the attractions we ‘had to try’ for the day and kept us to it with no deviations except for washroom and food breaks—Sean and I both knew that this kind of mumbo jumbo was a passion (interest? hobby? obsession?) of hers. Over the many years we had all been friends, Rachel had dragged Sean and me to see more 'witches', Gypsies, 'mediums', and mambos than I could count, partly because she was genuinely interested in hearing her future, but also because (I think) she needed to try to convince Sean and me they were real. I put up with it to make her happy; it was all harmless, really, except for the drain it placed on my wallet, but that was a minor inconvenience. As my grandfather used to say: _Sur cette terre il n'y a rien de plus précieux que la véritable amitié._

Just as I was about to give in to spare myself from the complaints I knew would come, Sean piped up again. “What about Pepper?” He asked pointedly, the glint in his eyes screaming that he thought he had found an air-tight way to dissuade Rachel. “I thought you said she needs to go out? She’s probably peeing on your bed right now…”

It was Rachel’s turn to roll her eyes. “Pepper has _never_ peed in my apartment; she can wait for just a few more minutes. This won’t take long.”

Defeated, Sean and I looked at each other again, my resignation echoed plainly on his face.

“Yay!” Rachel bubbled, knowing that she was going to get her way whether Sean or I like it or not. “Come on!”

Reluctantly, I let Rachel tow me along by my elbow away from the exit to the parking lot. Glass lanterns exactly like the one chained to the sign were staked in a winding path through the park, leading us back and deeper into the grounds. As the three of us raced along—Rachel was running at an almost frantic pace; she was afraid that Melany would close her house of lies before we got there (heaven forbid…)—I couldn’t help but wonder how I could have missed so many small and fragile objects. Even though it was hard to see anything close to the ground during the day because of all the people, you think I would have noticed (or tripped over, honestly) such an obvious trail. Sean, Rachel, and I had even wandered over this way at one point during the day, but, thinking back, I couldn’t seem to recall seeing anything out of the ordinary.

It took us a minute or two to get there but, eventually, we came to a stop at the end of the lantern-lit pathway. A bow top vardo (sans horse) with a turquoise roof and intricately-carved gold, red, green, and black panelling greeted us. Another larger sign and lantern, similar in appearance to the small one at the start of the path, stood just before the short ladder before the shuttered door like a sentry, advertising ‘Melany the Witch: $5.00 per Session’. To my surprise, seeing the antique cart, its doors flanked by old candle-lit carriage lamps, sent an unwelcome shiver up my spine.

Rachel could hardly contain herself when she saw it. “This is going to be so awesome!” She trilled as she fished a fiver out of her purse. “I’m going to go first, but you guys have to _promise_ that you’ll go after me. It’ll give us something to talk about on the way home.”

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t say no. Despite the fact that Rachel was assaulting Sean and me with her well-practised ‘kicked puppy’ face, something about the caravan cart compelled me to investigate it further. It was somehow familiar to me—not in the sense that I had seen it before, but in the sense that I had _sensed_ it before. Or, rather, sensed whomever—or whatever—was hidden inside. Looking at the outside decorations, even from a distance, made me feel a certain sense of _déjà vu_ : something about the patterns, shapes, and scenes depicted—two mirrored figures, the Eye of Providence, the sun and moon combined as one, and a dagger thrust through a heart framed amongst a forest of vines, stars, and trees—spoke to me as if I should know what they meant. But the more I looked at them, the more confused I became, to the point that my head started to spin.

“Flic?” Rachel asked suddenly and with the air that she had already asked for my attention more than once.

Ripping my eyes away from the distant golden carvings, I looked over at Rachel in surprise. She was frowning at me as if she was waiting for a response to a question. “What?” I asked, genuinely disoriented.

“You’ll go in last—after Sean, okay?” She asked pointedly and for what must have been for the nth time.

Casting a puzzled look up at Sean, who nodded encouragingly at me, I realised that I had been so wrapped up in my own head that I had missed an entire part of the conversation. “Yeah. Right,” I answered, bemused.

“Good!” Rachel squealed. “Be back soon!” She called over her shoulder as she dashed over to the caravan, scrambled up the curved stepladder, and ducked inside.

Sean and I went to sit on a nearby bench while we waited. “I can’t believe we let her talk us into wasting money like this,” he groaned.

“It makes her happy,” I sighed before fishing out the two five-dollar bills that I had left in my pocket. I held onto one before folding the remaining bill up and shoving it back away for safekeeping. “But, besides,” I continued after selecting my ‘offering to the cosmos’ (or whatever hocus-pocus we would hear this time), “you wanted to go out to eat, so you’re actually coming out ahead.”

Sean rolled his eyes. “This may be cheaper than going out, but at least I would get something _useful_ for my money at Denny’s.” Leaning back, Sean pulled out the contents of his pockets—all of it leftover change from the course of the day—and began to sift through it.

“Yeah: indigestion,” I laughed as I watched, counting in my head as he sorted the coins. Seventy-five cents. A dollar. A dollar twenty-five… I knew at the same time that he did that he didn’t have enough. Rachel wasn’t going to be pleased.

“Shit,” Sean cursed angrily before jamming the coins back into his pockets. “Do you think Witch-What’s-Her-Name takes credit cards?” He asked lamely, his tone half-joking, half-serious.

Without hesitation, I fished out my last five-dollar bill again and held it out to Sean. “Here,” I said easily. Although saving Sean from the Wrath of Rachel wasn’t what I had envisioned blowing the last of my petty cash on, lining Melany the Crock’s pockets was an easier cost to bear than buying the trouble of dealing with one of Rachel’s tantrums. I knew—and Sean knew—Rachel would be upset for the rest of the night if Sean didn’t go to have his fortune told and neither of us wanted to suffer that, especially after we had such a great day together.

“But that’s the last of your cash,” Sean sighed, upset. If there was one thing Sean hated, it was borrowing. If there was one thing he hated more than that, it was borrowing _money_. I couldn’t fault him on that, either; borrowing cash always left me feeling uncomfortable.

“Don’t worry about it,” I shrugged. “I really don’t want Rachel to have a hissy fit and, in the long run, you and I can laugh about this all later. Who’s going to crack jokes with me if you don’t go for a turn?”

Sean hesitated a second before he begrudgingly took the five-dollar note. He didn’t want to listen to Rachel whine just as much as I didn’t. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow,” he promised.

“Don’t worry about it,” I repeated before I began to play with my five-dollar sacrifice, folding it into a simple origami heart to pass time. “I know where you live.”

Rachel burst out of the vardo a few minutes later looking so happy that she might explode. “That was amazing!” She beamed as she trotted over to Sean and I. I could see by the way she was dancing in place that she was struggling to hold in what the Melany the Fraudster had told her until we had all had a go. “You next, Sean!” She instructed, reaching out to pull him to his feet.

With a heavy sigh, Sean flashed me the five dollars I had given him as if to say ‘thanks’. “Here I go,” he said melodramatically before marching himself towards the cart to pay his penance. I could tell by the frown on his face as he disappeared inside the small wagon that he was eager to get the ordeal over with. I didn’t blame him.

“Oh. My. _God_. Flic,” Rachel swooned as she plunked herself down next to me on the bench, “that was _so_ amazing!” I couldn’t help but smile indulgently when she grabbed onto my arm and bounced with excitement. “You’re going to be stunned, I promise! Best five dollars I’ve _ever_ spent!”

“Really?” I drawled, still unconvinced even though I still felt a sort of aversion to looking in the direction of the vardo. It was as if my body was reflexively trying to save my brain the pain of understanding the iconography it showcased. Just thinking about the carvings made me a bit dizzy.

Rachel nodded enthusiastically, looking a little like a cartoon character in her zeal. “Yes! You won’t _believe_ the things she told me,” she babbled. “I got the chills just hearing her speak!”

“You always say that,” I laughed, still unimpressed but completed endeared by Rachel’s naïveté. “What’s different about _this_ one?”

Rachel rolled her eyes dramatically. “I can’t tell you now,” she scolded while rapping me playfully on the arm. “Sean hasn’t come out yet and you haven’t had your turn.”

“Guide’s Promise: I’ll still act amazed when you tell Sean,” I teased as I held up a three-finger salute with my right hand.

I could see the wheels turning in Rachel’s head: she wanted so badly to tell me what she had heard inside the vardo but also wanted to wait to tell both Sean and me at once for dramatic effect. Her will was weak when it came to things like this though—and especially so when it came to keeping secrets (Rachel was notoriously loose-lipped)—so she caved to her excitement. And quickly. “Fine,” she giggled as she held up her own righthanded Guide’s salute and shook my left hand, sealing the promise just like we used to when we were nine. “I’ll tell you—but just a little bit so you’ll still be _honestly_ surprised later. She told me all about what we did today,” she leaned in to whisper, her tone reverent as if she was recounting being witness to a miracle.

Pulling away, I let out a frustrated sigh and rolled my eyes. “Rach, come _on_ ,” I complained, the disappointment that burned in my chest unexpected. “That’s nothing special,” I laughed when Rachel pouted at me, upset over my easy dismissal of her claims. “Anyone could have told you that; she just made a bunch of educated guesses and let you fill in the details—just like that lame clairvoyant, Madam Vesper, you drug me to last month.”

“No, really!” Rachel pressed, her eyes pleading. “And Madam Vesper wasn’t lame. She predicted Sean and you and I would get together ‘under the sun for a day of fun’ and we did!” If I had been able to roll my eyes any harder, I would have gone back in time. Rachel wasn’t impressed. “Don’t be so cynical, Flic,” she both commanded and plead at the same time. “Melany told me everything that we did today—and I mean _everything!_ She repeated stuff she couldn’t have known and I didn’t even get a second to talk the whole time I saw her.”

And yet I find the bit about you not talking the most unlikely thing of all… “Like what?” I drawled, still not convinced or impressed.

“She told me about how I almost fell into your tool chest when Sean and I came to pick you up,” Rachel started again, the small statement somehow filling my guts with ice.

“What?” I demanded, caught off guard. Of all the things that I had expected Rachel to say, it wasn’t that. Usually, these ‘psychics’ would lead off with vague, grasping statements and let the people they were supposed to be ‘reading’ fill in the rest of the details. It was easy to make guesses about someone’s future when they were basically telling you what they wanted to hear right from the off… But I had to admit, hearing that someone was able to retell such a mundane event without a lead-in was intriguing. The sense of dread that came over me was odd, though, and a little frightening. I wasn’t sure what I was so worried about, but something about the way Rachel was talking, in hurried, secretive tones as she continued to repeat the ‘as-told’ events of our day, made me nervous.

Rachel’s eyes lit up when she could see I was interested. “Yeah!” She enthused before launching into more evidence to support her claims. “Word for word—exactly as it happened. And then she told me how you tripped and fell outside the haunted house, and how Sean almost threw up on the Zipper, and how you tried that disgusting cricket grilled cheese sandwich after Sean dared you, and how…”

I listened to Rachel recount more and more of Melany’s puzzlingly accurate and mundane observations, my stomach in ropes, until Sean came out of the vardo five minutes later. He didn’t look nearly as impressed as Rachel.

“She’s so bogus,” he hissed into my ear as I got up to trade places with him on the bench. Pausing to look from Sean in his annoyance to Rachel in her anticipation, I suddenly wasn’t sure how I felt about going into the wagon. My intuition was screaming that nothing good would come of my going inside it, even though I still didn’t believe that Melany was really a ‘Witch’.

“Well, go on,” Rachel encouraged when I didn’t immediately leave.

“Are you okay, Flic?” Sean asked when he looked up at me, his concern genuine. “You look ill.”

With a slight shake of my head, I tried to centre myself and sternly remember that this was all just a harmless hoax. Witches weren’t real, no one could tell the future, and retelling the past was just lucky guessing. “I’m fine,” I deflected, waving away Sean’s observation and my nerves. “I’ll see you both in a few,” I muttered before I walked confidently over to the vardo, climbed up the stepladder, and ducked through the gilded doorway.

The inside of the wagon was dark and bare, save for the diffused reddish-pink glow of the rough-hewn crystal on display at the centre of a table. All of the windows to the outside were tightly shuttered and curtained, making the already small space feel even closer. A small three-legged (and well-used) stool was waiting for me on the near side of the table, poking just out from the lip of the heavy and dark navy velvet tablecloth that pooled on the floor. Walking cautiously into the claustrophobic space, I sat myself down at the table and waited; it was frightfully silent in the vardo and, although there were no other rooms to speak of inside, I had no idea where Melany the ‘Witch’ could have been hiding.

Although Rachel and Sean had come in and out of this tiny parlour without injury, as I sat there (awkwardly) and looked around the all-wooden interior, I felt afraid. My heart was pounding in my throat, spurred on by the complete lack of sound that seemed to envelop me. Even though the fairgrounds were surrounded by multiple busy roads, I could hear nothing. It was as if I had stepped into a void and the only sound was my breathing. Although I wanted to leave and repeatedly told myself that if Melany the ‘Witch’ didn’t show up in two more minutes, I was done, I couldn’t seem to make myself get up—out of curiosity or fear or some mix of the two, I didn’t know. So, unsure of what else to do, I reached into my jean’s pocket and pulled out the little silver Zippo—my dad’s old lighter—that I kept on me at all times and began to worry it. _Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack_ went the lid, the metallic sound of the clasp opening and closing becoming like the even ticking of a clock as I waited in suspense.

After what felt like hours, my frustration finally overwhelmed my fear. “This is a waste of my time,” I growled, both upset with myself for hanging around so long and with Melany for making me look silly.

“Sorry for the wait, dear,” a familiarly-unfamiliar and airy voice sang from behind me, making me jump. Spinning in my seat, I looked behind me: there was nothing there but the only door in or out of the vardo.

“I just had a little something I had to attend to; I hope you don’t mind,” the same voice continued, this time from the far side of the table. Twirling around in the other direction like a top, I found myself facing a slender woman with long, wavy black hair and a kind, heart-shaped face. Her gently olive-toned skin seemed to shimmer in the diffused light that separated us and her full, bow-like lips were tied in an easy, loving smile. She was exceptionally beautiful in an unnatural, Dorian Gray kind of way—as if she should have looked much older than she did. It had something to do with her eyes: one was a brown so dark it looked black in the dim light, while the other was a blue so white it looked devoid of life, but both seemed to scream of age and wisdom far beyond the forty-something-year-old woman that stared at me. And yet, as I stared back at her, this woman I had never met before in my life, I felt as if I knew her, both in the span of my lifetime and beyond it.

“No,” I breathed. My mouth was suddenly so dry I was barely able to form the word.

“I appreciate that,” the woman smiled gently as if she was trying not to scare me. “I’m Melany, by the way.”

“I figured,” I managed to say as I fumblingly stuffed my lighter back into my pocket and exchanged it for my origami five-dollar bill. “I’m Felicia,” I added just as awkwardly after a brief pause.

Melany laughed, the sound like the gentle ringing of a distant wind chime. “I figured,” she parroted with a wink. “I’ve already seen a lot of you through your friends,” she continued gracefully when I didn’t make an effort to continue the conversation. “However, I’ve been anticipating meeting you in person all day.”

“Right,” I smiled blandly, trying to hide the sudden anxious tightness in my chest with indifference. “Look, Melany,” I sighed as I placed my hands and my money on the table, “I’m going to be honest: I’m going to bookend this… _experience_ with telling you that I don’t believe in fortune-telling. I’m only here because my friend Rachel asked me to talk to you.”

“Yes, she did mention you’re a bit of a sceptic,” Melany laughed, the sound tainted as though she found a sad sort of irony in what I had said, “but that’s alright. Most people say that until they meet me… Will you allow me the chance to change your mind?” Here, she rested her elbows on the table and knit her hands together, making a rest for her chin.

Surprised by Melany’s lack of a temper (most of the ‘mystics’ I had been taken to got upset when I told them I thought they were full of it), I floundered for how to proceed. “I mean, I guess,” I stammered ineptly. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“No,” Melany smiled, her eyes full of laughter.

“I knew it,” I sighed resignedly with a roll of my eyes.

“Excellent,” Melany the ‘Witch’ beamed as she sat up straight. “I’ll need a sacrifice before we can begin,” she said cryptically before putting out her hand. Her fingers were tastefully covered in an assortment of gold rings of different thicknesses and patterns; they shone prettily in the dim light, though the glitter had a sense of danger attached to it—like the enticing glow of the anglerfish to its prey.

Well, at least you’re direct… “The last of my petty cash,” I said pointedly as I (somewhat warily) placed the heart-shaped fiver in her palm. “Is that enough?”

“This will do just fine,” Melany said kindly as she gently placed the money in a small golden tray I hadn’t noticed before. Reaching into the sleeve of her loose, honey-coloured cardigan, I watched, confused, as she pulled out a tastefully jewelled tube—a vintage lipstick-style lighter by the look of it. My suspicions were confirmed when she carefully removed the cap to expose the striking mechanism and then brought a flame into existence with a quick flick of her thumb.

“What are you doing?” I asked, unsure what the flame was for. There were no candles in sight and, from what I could see, Melany didn’t have a cigarette on her (unless she hid those in her sleeves, too).

“Making a sacrifice,” she said matter-of-factly before touching the flame to the little paper heart I had given her. Even though the polymer bill shouldn’t have ignited so easily, it quickly and curiously caught fire. In the blink of an eye, my money smouldered to ash in the burning plate, gone before I could react to try and save it. The smell of scorched paper, plastic, and ink lingered thickly in the air like the heavy smell of incense, stinging my nose.

… What the Hell have I gotten myself into?

I stared at the woman across from me in utter shock. “Well, that was a new trick,” I breathed after I found my tongue again. “I’ll give you that.”

Melany laughed merrily as she tucked away her lighter and then busied her hands by toying with the long string of pearls that was draped just so around her slender neck. At that moment, I couldn’t help but notice how she was dressed: under her knit sweater was a draping, 1920s-style navy house dress with a plunging neckline that looked as if it should have been in a fashion plate instead of on a person. Between her clothes and her accessories, all Melany was missing was a thick headband to tame her hair and some Coke-bottle glasses and she would have looked every inch the late-night TV medium. Yet, in some way, the vintage-inspired outfit suited her perfectly, as if she had lived through the time period long enough to know how to effortlessly pull off the ensemble. “Well, where to begin? At the start, I suppose,” she teased, answering her own question with a silent, laughing suggestion that she was privy to information she wasn’t going to share with me (even though I had paid her for it).

I swallowed hard, unable to shake the returning dread that had made a cold home in my guts. “Lay it on me,” I challenged as confidently as I could, scepticism rolling off of me in what I hoped were tangible waves. “What’s my future?”

“Let’s start by discussing your past… I need you to believe that I’m not a fraud before I can reveal anything beyond that, Felicia Kristen Rhys,” Melany began, her mismatched eyes glittering in a way that screamed she could see through me and down to my soul at will. “Perhaps it would convince you to hear me repeat things about your life that only someone close to you would know? Things _I_ shouldn’t know.”

The icy lump of dread in my belly turned to a porcupine in an instant. “How do you know my name?” I demanded. “Did Rachel tell you?” That blabber-mouth.

Melany laughed heartily, but the act wasn’t malicious. “No, no,” she soothed, gently waving away my accusations as you would a butterfly. “Definitely not. But that was, perhaps, a low-hanging fruit… How about, instead, I tell you that your parents adopted your little cat, Sabbath, for your ninth birthday? Or that the scar on your right knee is from when you stumbled and fell at the age of three on the way to a funeral you don’t remember? Or, perhaps, I tell you that your father used to call you ‘his little bunny’—or, rather, ‘ _mon petite lapinette_ ’? He’d called you that from the moment he held you for the first time.”

“How do you know that?” I asked stiffly, suddenly angry out of fear. The truths Melany had so nonchalantly rattled off were things only my mother, Chris, Sean, and Rachel knew and never talked about anymore—especially not in casual conversation with a stranger. For a moment, I thought that Sean or Rachel might have been to blame for giving Melany ammunition against me, but as soon as the thought popped into my head, I knew they would never have told anyone such intimate stories about me without asking first. So, if that was true, how could this woman—whom I didn’t know from Eve—be able to spout off such private knowledge about me? Was she dangerous? Or, worse: was she everything she claimed to be?

“That was your favourite bedtime story, too,” Melany continued somewhat sadly as if I hadn’t interrupted her, the gentle glow of the crystal at the centre of the table making her eyes shine. “You loved to listen to him tell you about how, when you were just hours old, the only way to calm you was to hold you close and bounce you—gently, up and down and up and down… He would joke with you that, because of how you liked to be rocked, he could tell you were actually a rabbit in disguise—that faeries had put you there in place of the human baby they’d stolen. But, even if you were his little bunny in girl’s clothing, he loved you just the same and promised never to te—”

“—How do you know that?” I demanded again, this time loudly and with tears stinging at my eyes (I’m an emotional crier: sad, angry, happy… doesn’t matter; it’s a curse). Blinking away the wetness before it could betray me, I glared at Melany to hide how exposed I was suddenly feeling. She was right: that was my favourite bedtime story as a child. For as long as I could remember, even when I had gotten a little too big to hold, my father would gather me in his arms and tell me how much he loved me. He would go on about how I special I was, how he would never tell anyone my faerie secret, and how he was sure, at some point, I would grow a tail or a twitchy pink nose or long floppy ears—something to prove what I _really_ was. I would deny it, of course, and he would try to tickle me into confessing… But the only person alive who should have known that was my mother and she wasn’t here to speak.

“I’m a Witch,” Melany smiled with a delicate sort of triumph, but also the hint of an important secret. “Do you believe me now?” She ashed after a heavy pause.

I hesitated. Although I tried to reason it six ways from Sunday, I just couldn’t come up with a viable explanation that didn’t involve a violation of the trust I had with Rachel and Sean. I knew it was impossible for them to have even shared such a private story in the first place, but I also knew they would never betray me like that. The only logical (and simplest) answer for how Melany was able to know such things was that she was… _real_. “For the moment,” I whispered, the admission sending a shiver down my spine.

“Excellent. Now we can discuss your future, Felicia,” Melany enthused in a whisper, her tone serious and light at the same time, as she rubbed her hands together with anticipation. I watched as she reclined back from the table slightly, resting casually against the old wooden chair that she has enthroned herself on.

“I don’t have any more cash, if that’s what you’re implying,” I said flatly, uncomfortable with the sudden density of the air. The small space inside the vardo was suddenly charged with intangible energy that seemed to tingle on my exposed skin like electricity. It was a feeling I knew but at the same time, it was frightening—like the way lightning energises the air before its raw energy cracks across a stormy sky.

Melany chuckled quietly to herself and shook her head indulgently. “That won’t be necessary,” she explained, “the proper sacrifices have already been made for what’s about to happen.”

“Which is… ?”

“I’m going to tell you a few important things and then I’m going to send you away.”

“That’s the first normal thing you’ve said since I sat down.”

“Is it?” Melany challenged with a wry smile.

I couldn’t help but scoff an awkward laugh as my heart fell to my shoes. “Prove me wrong, then,” I invited as I leaned forward, elbows on the table. The velvet cloth felt cool and familiar beneath my skin.

Another pause. Melany looked at me deeply, her eyes taking on that keenness which silently said she was seeing more than just my person as she stared at me. “I’ve worked long and hard to be able to sit here with you now,” she began solemnly. “In the beginning, I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing, but now that you’re here… I’m comfortable with it. I know that seems like an odd preface for what I’m about to tell you, but it’s necessary. I need you to know that everything I’ve done—everything I’m going to do… It’s been _for_ you,” Melany whispered before she paused and took in a deep breath, her kind face suddenly etched and drawn with a mixture of pain and determination. For that moment, she seemed to look her age: ancient beyond understanding. “But to the point,” Melany continued after forcing the hardness of her emotions into a softer, more graceful expression. “Felicia, your future is one of changes: changes in place, changes in time, changes in understanding, and changes in you.”

I couldn’t keep my brow from furrowing with confusion. On any other occasion, I would have dismissed Melany for someone a few screws short of a Billy bookcase, but as I sat there looking at the oddly familiar stranger across from me, I found myself _wanting_ to believe her. It was something about the sincerity in her voice, the wisdom in her eyes, and the way her voice seemed to reverberate with power that suspended my well-entrenched disbelief. The truth of her words seemed to touch my soul… And that was both frightening and convincing. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” I said quietly, my guise of cynicism falling away.

“Of course,” Melany agreed sincerely as she adjusted herself in her chair and demurely knit her hands together in her lap. “I wouldn’t be a very good Witch if I couldn’t be more specific, now would I?”

“No, you wouldn’t,” I half-smiled, hanging on her every word.

“Firstly: chances in place. When you leave me tonight, you will not be going home,” she admitted as though she was giving me bad news.

I had to give her that, though I didn’t understand why she seemed so sorry about it. “Yes, I’m supposed to be going to my friend’s house. Good guess.”

Melany smiled and laughed to herself as though I had missed a joke, but didn’t say more on the subject. “Secondly: changes in time,” she intoned, her voice taking on that same air of raw power it had before. “With the sacrifice you’ve made, you will help to both turn back and stop the hands of the clock.”

“I thought we said we were going to be specific?” I asked pointedly even though the hairs on the back of my neck had risen to attention. I didn’t understand what Melany had meant (time travel was impossible), but, just the same, it inexplicably rang true.

“I have to maintain some air of mysticism,” Melany teased with a wink. “If I’m _too_ literal, no one will believe me.”

I rolled my eyes indulgently. “Fine. Go on.”

“Thirdly: changes in understanding,” the Witch continued. “With changes in time and place, you will see yourself differently—in the sense of who you have always been, who you were, and who you will become.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I challenged. “Two of those things are in the past tense: who I’ve ‘always been’ and who ‘I was’ are the same thing.”

“And fourthly: changes in you,” Melany continued without answering my assertion, her eyes sparkling with laughter and sadness. “Two final sacrifices must be given: one will be made for you and the other will be of your choosing. The first sacrifice will change you physically, cutting you off from realising your birthright. The second sacrifice will be equally irreversible, but will instead change how you see yourself and how others see you.”

“You stopped making sense about three predictions ago,” I said icily, unable to keep a fresh shiver from racing up my spine. Although I didn’t understand the meaning behind the cryptic predictions Melany had made, they seemed to worm their way down into the very core of my being and violently stab at it. The things Meland had said, however pleasantly, were threats against my soul—implications that I would give up something important to me, even though I didn’t know what that important thing was—and, puzzlingly so, I was offended (as well as confused).

Melany sighed heavily before she took a moment’s pause to stare intently at the ashes in the burning plate before her. She was debating saying something: I could see the apprehension in her eyes that said she wasn’t sure if what was on her mind was safe to share. “There are so many things I wish I had been able to teach you—that I wish your father could have taught you,” Melany muttered after releasing another smaller sigh, her thoughts slipping out like water from a floodgate. “I just hope I’ve prepared things as best I can for you. But who am I kidding?” She laughed to herself before looking back at me, her gaze now motherly and kind. “You’ll be fine, won’t you, Felicia? You always have been—you’re smart, self-sufficient, and brave… Just the same as she was. And, besides, you won’t be alone for long.”

Trying to understand what Melany had said left me reeling. Just _listening_ to her gave me the same feeling of head-spinning disorientation looking at the reliefs on the vardo had. “Is that another prediction?” I asked, bewildered, to try and focus the Witch and change the subject to something that made my head hurt less.

“Yes,” Melany smiled. “You are going to meet lots of new people where and when you’re going—most of them wolves in sheep's clothing. Beware the elder brother,” she instructed seriously. “He’s nothing but trouble. But the younger will be good to you if you allow each other the chance to be vulnerable.”

“Do you ever _not_ speak in tongues?” I demanded, exasperated.

“Where would the fun be in that?” Melany retorted impishly.

My elbows still steepled on the table, I let my head fall into my hands and stared down at the velvet tablecloth. I was at a loss. “So what now?” I sighed. I was frustrated and uneasy and didn’t like the fact that I was feeling either of those things when I should have been laughing at the absurdity of my situation. I reflexively looked up at Melany when she let out a friendly chuckle in reply.

“I give you one last piece of advice, my dear, and then we part ways,” she answered with a tender, loving sadness that chased away my frustration to make more room for the disquiet that constricted my chest. A long, dead pause filled every inch of the vardo. It was suffocating to the point that I found myself suddenly afraid to speak. The Witch simply sighed lightly and shifted in her seat, seemingly unaware of the tension that filled the air. “Felicia,” Melany continued, her gentle tone not matching the eerie solemnity in her eyes, “normalcy is an illusion—an easy, comfortable lie that billions of people believe to keep their lives simple. There are things—people, creatures, powers, possibilities—that exist in reality that, by their faces, appear to be pure fiction. Know that they aren’t. _Believe_ that they aren’t. And even though in the coming days it will be easier to write off the strangeness you will witness as fantasy, the truths that are about to open to you are very real—and more a part of your life than you have ever known. If your father had been afforded the chance, he would have told you this—explained things as they really are—when you were much younger. I know that isn’t a consolation, but it is another truth. On the one hand, I’m sad that you know so little… But on the other, I’m glad: knowing more would only make things more difficult.”

“I don’t understand,” I managed to whisper. Something about the seriousness I felt radiating off of Melany made me sit up, back ram-rod straight; even though I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, I could feel it wasn’t good.

“I know,” Melany nodded with another sad smile. “I wish I could explain…”

“But?” I pressed cautiously.

“Those aren’t my secrets to share,” the Witch confessed. “As infinitely powerful as I am, some things are beyond my control.” Here, she nervously fiddled with the pearls around her neck, rubbing each uniquely-shaped gemstone like a bead of a rosary. “So, instead, I’ll leave you with this: as much as you would like to come back to this moment—to now—you can’t. Everything you know is about to change… You’ve only to say the magic word,” Melany finished drolly.

I couldn’t help but laugh dryly at that. “Which is what?” The question was loaded as the air, the three small words carrying with them more weight than I had ever ascribed to them before. 

“‘Goodbye’.”

I felt myself frown, thrown off by the plainness of Melany’s answer. “I was expecting ‘abracadabra, but alright,” I joked to try and distract myself from the fact that goosebumps were prickling up all over my skin.

Melany laughed, the musical sound familiar to me even though I had just met her. “Yes, a bit anticlimactic, I know, but it’s a powerful word nonetheless. Magic isn’t just about incantations, Felicia: it’s about balance. We started a spell together with a greeting and the needed sacrifices… To complete it, we must close the circle.”

“And what if I won’t say it? What if I just get up and leave?” I challenged almost desperately, the irrational and inexplicable fear and discomfort that quickened my pulse causing a tremor in my voice. Even though that was one hundred percent, totally, completely, and undeniably the smart thing to do—the _sane_ thing to do… I couldn’t force myself to just _leave_. The thought of darting out without properly ‘finishing’ this conversation (if you could call it that) hurt my very soul. It made me feel ‘wrong’ in the same inexplicable way that witnessing an injustice or some other gross affront to my moral code would. I _had_ to stay. I _had_ to say ‘goodbye’.

Melany smiled coyly, her bicoloured eyes twinkling impishly. “You could,” she allowed as she continued to toy with her necklace, her gaze never straying from mine. “But you won’t.” 

“You don’t know me,” I countered stonily, though the words didn’t ring true.

“Perhaps not as well as I should,” the Witch allowed, “but I do know your father raised you to be kind and respectful. And even if he didn’t have the chance to teach you all that he could have beyond that, you won’t leave without completing what we started together—regardless of knowing why.”

Although I desperately wanted to, I couldn’t argue with that. “So, what: I just… say my farewells and then I can go?”

“Yes, that’s all you have to do; I’ll handle the rest,” Melany nodded, her tone impartial as if we were divvying up household chores.

I stared back at her, my breathing suddenly heavy as if I was psyching myself up to jump off a cliff. That small, unassuming word hovered on the end of my tongue, waiting to leap out from behind my lips even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to let it loose. Drawing in a deep breath, I prepared (against my better judgement) to release it… but stopped. “This is crazy,” I muttered instead, the tightness in my chest caused by a mix of fear of the unknown and the desire to free the syllables that sat on my tongue like daggers. “You’re crazy. This is all _crazy_.”

Melany looked kindly on me, her gaze soft and motherly again. She truly understood my trepidation. “I know it seems that way,” she agreed. “But it will make sense eventually.”

Taking in another shuddering breath and feeling quite unlike myself, I spoke before I could think better of it again. “Goodbye,” I barely whispered, my voice so quiet and cautious that I wasn’t even sure if I had thought the word or said it aloud.

As her posture relaxed, Melany let out the smallest of relieved sighs as if she was finally at the end of a long and arduous journey. “Goodbye, my darling,” she replied, her voice quiet and soothing with longing.

Suddenly and without warning, an intense wave of vertigo—the likes of which I had never experienced before—overtook me. The entire room seemed to waver and spin around me, the only point of stability the large, red-pink crystal at the centre of the table. Leaning roughly forward onto the table, I tried to steady my vision, but nothing seemed to help. My breathing was ragged and fast and my stomach a roil. There was an odd smell in the air, too, like the burning of herbs and grass; the heavy, potent odour stung in my nose, putting me on the verge of being sick. “Please… Help me,” I managed to gasp, the sound of my own voice surprisingly distant and muddied as if I was underwater. Although I looked up to Melany for relief, I couldn’t focus on her face—everything was a blur, the world around me swirling like a vortex. I thought I heard her speak, but the sounds were muted and unintelligible. For a moment, as I stared dumbly at the Witch, the world seemed to freeze, and for the split second, I recognised who Melany _really_ was. But as soon as the memories and vague recollections clicked together in my head, I fell over from my seat, unconscious before I hit the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

VIOLENTLY, AND WITH A gasp as though I had been sucker-punched in the gut, I came to.

Eyes wide and vision blurry, I rolled heavily onto my side, my hands clutched at my chest as if they could stop the searing pain that radiated outwards from my heart and lungs. Every vein, every muscle, every _atom_ of me burned as if I had been holding my breath for far too long and, just the same, I felt on the verge of passing out again. Darkness threatened at the intangible fringes of my vision; the only thing keeping that nothingness at bay was the frantic racing of my heart and the ragged breaths that heaved my chest. Desperate to stay conscious, I crammed my eyes shut and tried to focus on anything other than the pain—the coldness that pressed against my face, the gentle breeze that ruffled my hair, the heaviness of the air… As the seconds slowly passed, the agony that threatened to overwhelm me began to fade, taking with it the menace of unconsciousness that had been so ready to pounce on me. Free to think again, I realised, in a sort of bewildered way, that I was laying on the ground. Opening my eyes a crack, I found my face pressed into a thick carpet of grass, the familiar, cool sensation of it pricking and poking against my skin focussing me. Rolling slowly onto my back, I tried to sit up, but a wave of vertigo quickly overtook me and kept me pinned down. Cramming my eyes shut once again, I instead lost myself in the fuzzy blackness that lives behind our eyelids, trying to puzzle out what had happened to me as I waited for my head to clear.

Try as I might, I couldn’t remember a Hell of a lot. The last thing I _clearly_ remembered was walking through the midway towards the parking lot and Sean’s car. It was late—the fairgrounds were shutting down around us—and Rachel had suggested we go back to her apartment to watch a movie. She and Sean had then rehashed the same, stupid argument they always had over ‘The Frisbee Incident’ and… then what? There had been something else—something important… But the more I tried to remember what it was, the worse the spinning that plagued me became. Quickly abandoning that train of thought (lest I be sick), I let out a frustrated sigh and opened my eyes to the sky. Looking around still in a bit of a daze, I realised that I didn’t recognise the trees that were looming overhead. As that thought dawned on me, I realised, too, that there shouldn’t have been any trees anywhere near me if I was still at the midway.

… Oh, _fuck_.

Forcing myself upright with a jolt of panic, I looked frantically around. Head still spinning slight, I found myself sitting in the middle of, for lack of a better word, ‘fucking nowhere’. Grass, trees, scrubby bushes, rocks, and hills surrounded me on all sides, the unfamiliar sight and smell of the wilderness only made worse by the depth of the night. Scrambling to my feet, I frantically looked around for some signal as to where I was. “Shit,” I cursed under my breath when I found nothing but more unfamiliar landscape. As I stood there, turning this way and that to try and get my bearings, my heart began to race again, those frightened palpitations making my whole body tremble. “Hello?” I yelled out stupidly in answer to the distant howl of a coyote. “Rachel? Sean? _Anyone!?_ ” I continued, my frantic screaming answered only by the gentle sounds of the night.

I was completely alone.

“I must be dreaming,” I whispered frantically to myself as the panic that constricted my chest and rang in my ears began to settle into a deep feeling of true fear. “It’s just a dream; it’s just a dream,” I repeated over and over as I did everything I could to end what _had_ to be a vivid nightmare: I pinched my forearm, pulled sharply on my ear, dug my nails into my palm, bit my tongue, held my breath… But nothing worked. “Okay,” I muttered between frantic breaths, “maybe you really are lost—and that’s okay. You can fix this—you just need to calm down first.” Letting out a shuddering sigh, I tried to squash back the tide of lunacy that had welled up in my chest, constricting it like a vice. I needed to keep a level head or else I would just make my situation worse, but that was easier said than done. “Okay,” I breathed, still falling to pieces as I turned around to try and get my bearings for the millionth time, “where am I?”

… Nowhere, dipshit.

Running my hands through my hair, I gripped two handfuls of it, pulled on my scalp, and let out a frustrated scream. Oddly enough, this focussed me slightly, as if I had physically released some of the panicked tightness in my lungs. Finally calmer, I released my hair and went back to pondering my situation. How did I get here? And what the fuck _happened_ to me!? As far as I could feel, aside from being a little woozy and fucking _lost_ , I didn’t have a scratch or a bruise on me. Patting my body just to double-check, I eventually felt my way down to my jean’s pockets and found that I still had my driver’s license, my dad’s old lighter, and my phone. So, at the very least I could be thankful that I hadn’t been robbed before being left for dead, but that didn’t explain how I had gotten wherever ‘here’ was.

… Wait. _My phone._

If someone else had been around, they would have seen a light bulb turn on over my head.

I couldn’t pull my phone out fast enough; I was so frantic with relief and excitement that I almost dropped it—twice. When I finally held it securely in my hand, I unlocked it to dial 911. That was when I noticed I had no service. Not ‘bad reception’, not ‘limited network reliability’, not ‘unreliable network connection’—none. Period. It was as if I was standing on the surface of the moon instead of in some empty plot of land. My heart fell to my shoes. If my phone wouldn’t work, what was I going to do? No, my phone _had_ to work: I couldn’t be that far away from civilization… Maybe I had fallen on it and it just needed some ‘help’ to start working again. Suddenly hyper-focused on getting my phone (read ‘my only lifeline’) to work (what other option did I have?), I did what any university-educated young person would do: I hit my phone a few times on my palm, restarted it, and then wandered aimlessly across the scrubby ground with it held up in the air.

Needless to say, nothing I tried helped.

After a few minutes of pointless meandering, I had gained nothing more than a tired arm. Shoving my phone angrily back into my pocket, I continued to walk in the direction I had been going, hoping against the sinking feeling in my guts that I would miraculously find a road or a house or _something_. It was quiet out in nowhere: aside from the rustling of the breeze through the grass and sun-baked bushes, the only sounds to keep me company were the occasional singing of the coyotes (or worse, wolves) and the chirping and buzzing of insects. There were no lights save for the stars and moon overhead and the air was humid and warm—quite unlike the dry prairie air I was used to, which only added to my unease. The sharp hills in the distance also gave me the unsettling feeling that I was far, _far_ away from the flat plains of home. As I walked through the countryside, I couldn’t help but go back to dwelling on how I had managed to get here in the first place. To quote Disney’s best animated film of all time The Emperor’s New Groove (fight me): “By all accounts, it [didn’t] make sense.” If I had fainted—which I most likely had, though I’d never fainted before in my life—I should have woken up on the fairground pavement or in the back of an ambulance, not out here. Clearly, I was missing some key piece of information that would explain how I had ended up stranded and alone. If my memory was spotty, maybe I had hit my head when I collapsed… Wasn’t that a symptom of a concussion? But, even so, where were Sean and Rachel? They wouldn’t _both_ have just left me on my own, especially if I had fallen. That was the strangest thing about all of this. Though, maybe they had left for hel—

I let out a loud, startled yelp as I walked directly off the edge of a small embankment and windmilled downhill (barely managing to keep myself from going ass over teakettle) onto a road. After the initial shock of my tumble wore off, I was enveloped with a deep sense of relief. Roads were good: roads lead to towns and towns meant people. People meant help and help meant that I was going to be home in no time! But… As I stood in the middle of the pavement, I found myself left with another impossible question: which way to go—left or right? Since I had no idea how far out into the middle of nowhere I had ended up, a wrong decision now meant the difference between walking for a few hours and walking for days. But, then again, either direction I chose put me at greater odds of being spotted by someone driving past… Though the stark lack of streetlights and the fact that I couldn’t hear the hum of nearby traffic made me _extremely_ concerned that this was some backcountry highway rarely travelled at night.

I stood for a long while trying to reason my to a choice, but ultimately, it came down to gut instinct. I had a good feeling about ‘right’, so that was the way I went. And so I walked, and walked, and walked, and _walked_ … But after what felt like nearly an hour, I started to lose hope of ever finding help. I hadn’t passed a single car or person in the whole while I had been trudging along, and judging by the eerily quiet and untamed countryside that still surrounded me, I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to. At some point, I had put my thumb out (just in case), but that had been pointless, just like walking had. I should have just stayed put at the roadside where I had started—isn’t that the first rule they teach kids about getting lost? ‘Next time, stay _right_ where you are’, I suddenly heard my father scolding a six-year-old-me who had accidentally wandered off in the grocery store, only to lead him on a Scooby-Doo à la Benny Hill style chase for over thirty minutes. I guess I never learned my lesson. Maybe I was better off just sitting down… Luckily, just as I was about to give up entirely and sit down to wallow in my misfortune, I heard a car approaching behind me. Turning to walk backwards with renewed vigour, I held my one arm farther out (thumb still pointed skywards) to hail down whoever was approaching and used my other arm to shield my eyes from the glaring headlights. My heart raced as I watched the vehicle near… and slow to a stop just ahead of me. I had never hitchhiked before in my life (tonight was a night for firsts, apparently), but I wasn’t about to let that hold me back.

Rushing over to the front passenger window, I waited for the driver to lower the glass. The sound of the power windows reminded me of the ones in my grandfather’s old F150 (he bought that farm truck brand-new a few years before I was born and held onto the stupid thing until it literally fell apart). “Can I help you?” The man asked through the open window, his voice casual and nondescript, as he flicked on the overhead lights above the dash.

“Hi,” I said cheerfully, trying to make myself seem as non-threatening as possible as I leaned down to look inside the car. The man behind the steering wheel was average looking, tall, and had pale-brown hair. He was wearing tan Ray-Ban glasses and clothes that instantly made me think he was stuck in the past: his collared cotton shirt was loudly patterned with seafoam, yellow, and white vertical stripes and, even from here, I could see that his khaki dress pants were high-waisted and heavily pleated. His ensemble screamed ‘1980’ as loudly as a neon billboard for Back to the Future. Unfortunately, his car said much of the same: it was a beige, boat-like Cadillac Sedan de Ville that looked so vintage it hurt. “Thanks for stopping,” I continued, relief a little too plain in my tone. “I was wondering if you could give me a ride? Please.”

“I’m heading into town—it’s only about thirty minutes down the road from here. Is that okay?” The man asked with a pleasant smile as he leaned nonchalantly on the centre armrest of his car to get a better look at me. His eyes were a washed-out brown and his face was long and relaxed. He seemed safe enough to take a chance on.

“What town?” I asked carefully, trying not to sound too confused or desperate.

“Santa Carla,” the driver replied as if I had posed a reasonable question. “I’m on my way back from Los Gatos.”

“Perfect,” I smiled, trying to fill my voice with gratitude even though I had no idea where Santa Carla or Los Gatos were. 

“It’s unlocked,” the man behind the wheel laughed before he sat upright to let me in.

Although I thought better of it for a second, I quickly shoved aside my propriety, pulled open the door, and slid into the car. “I’m Felicia,” I said as I held out my hand to the kind stranger. “Thanks for letting me catch a ride with you.”

“It’s my pleasure and I’m Max,” he replied, shaking my hand before powering-closed the passenger window and strapping himself back in. I quickly did the same as the man—Max—reached up to turn the overhead lights off and then took off once again down the road. Unsure of what else to do with myself (was there such a thing as ‘proper hitchhiking etiquette’?), I focussed my nervous energy on trying to make out shapes and objects in the darkness that whizzed by outside. Unnecessary small talk was never my forte. “So,” Max said pleasantly after a few minutes of quiet, “I don’t usually see many people along this road. How did you wind up so far away from civilization?”

I jumped slightly at the sound of Max’s voice; I had gotten a bit lost in my own head as I watched for some sign—a road marker or billboard or _anything_ illuminated by the headlamps—that would tell me where I was. “I, um… I went out for a walk,” I lied with a nervous laugh. Although I had turned back towards Max to speak to him, I couldn’t look him in the face; the explanation was so ridiculous—even to my ears—that I was left embarrassed. So instead, I watched Max’s hands on the steering wheel, the radium-green illuminated clock on the dashboard (it was a quarter past eleven), the backcountry road ahead—anywhere but Max’s face.

“Alone?” Max asked incredulously, his tone hinting that he saw right through me. “It’s late for a leisurely _hike_ through the countryside.”

Well, you’d commit me if I told you the truth, so this is the best story I could make up on short notice. “Yeah, um… I know. It’s just, you see,” I floundered as my cheeks flushed bright pink, “I, well, I’ve been… Going across the c-country. Yeah. And, um, I couldn’t… Catch a ride in the right direction today? So, I was walking instead and, uh… I got lost.” Yeah. Right. Real smooth, Flic. An airtight alibi, for sure. This would be going better if you had just led off with the ‘getting lost’ bit.

… Have I ever mentioned I’m a _terrible_ liar?

“Ah, I see,” Max said sagely as though he found my story somewhat believable. “You pack lightly for someone travelling across the country on her thumb,” he mused offhandedly with the pointed sort of gentleness only parents can invoke when they’re playing along with a small child’s tall tale.

It didn’t take someone from Mensa to tell that Max was trying to poke holes in my story to get me to fess up to the truth. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much choice other than to just keep running with my horrible lie; I truly had no clue how I had wound up out here and alone, but it didn’t make sense to start running my mouth off about it to a complete stranger. If I was sure of anything, frivolously throwing around the phrase ‘I don’t know how I got here’ was an easy way to earn a one-way ticket into a straitjacket. In retrospect, I had probably already said too much. “Yeah,” I laughed nervously before looking back out the window to try and close the subject.

“Your mother and father must trust you a lot to let you be out on your own like this,” Max posited casually, drawing my attention back to him—and not in the best way. I couldn’t help but frown at him: he was relentless. And that wasn’t to mention it was now crystal clear he thought I was some sort of fugitive child who had fled from her parents.

“I’m not running away from home, if that’s what you’re implying,” I countered more forcefully, emboldened by that special sort of confidence which only accompanies feeling insulted. “I’m old enough to live on my own.”

Max chuckled sheepishly before shooting me a placatory smile. “My apologies,” he said politely as he quickly turned his eyes back to the road, “I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“No, you shouldn't have,” I muttered icily under my breath before turning more purposefully to resume my vigil at the passenger window. A weighty silence filled the car as I sat and stared at the passing world outside, but I didn’t have the capacity to feel awkward under it. I was too busy trying to place the dark, eerie shapes of unfamiliar trees and the occasional house that flew by as we sped along. From what I could make out through the darkness, the landscape outside reminded vaguely me of where my family used to summer before my dad passed away, but the more I watched the scenery go by, the more I felt something was off about it. Everything was too _lush_ : instead of being dry and almost desert-like, everything was green and full and alive. The distant hills that interrupted the ground were wrong, too: they were more angular and dense than the rolling silhouettes I grew up hiking. Instead of being gentle bubblings of the earth, they seemed to be bunched together and rushing towards an end, like the waves in a river before it falls over a cliff to rejoin the sea… The sea. _That_ was the ‘off-ness’ I could feel in the air: that was the source of the salty, mineral perfume that hinted in my nose and the dense humidity that clung to my skin. But how was that possible? The nearest coast to where I lived was nearly thirteen hours away—a distance I couldn’t have travelled while unconscious. “Stupid question,” I started slowly, the words slipping out without thought as I pulled my eyes away from the window to face Max again.

“Stupid answer,” he replied, his eyes never leaving the road. I could see through the dim glow from the instruments before the steering wheel and on the dash that he was wearing a small smile.

“Um… Where exactly _is_ Santa Carla?” I asked carefully, fully aware of how crazy I sounded.

His happiness fading instantly, Max shot me a worried look out of the corner of his eye before answering. “California. On the coast,” he explained slowly, obviously regretting his decision to stop for me.

I had to stop myself from letting out a shuddering sigh of panic. How the _Hell_ had I ended up in California!? That was at least a twenty-six-hour drive from where I lived and obviously not a distance I could have walked. So, unless I had learned to levitate, discovered teleportation, or slept walked onto a plane, I had just _appeared_ nearly twenty-five hundred kilometres away from home. Unless this was some kind of sick joke Rachel and Sean were playing on me… “Right,” I tittered with an uncomfortable and awkward smile, my cheeks flushing pink. “Like I said: stupid question.”

“Are you alright?” Max asked, concerned. I would be regretting my life choices up to this point too if I were him.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said with as much reassurance as I could muster, turning my head to look out the window and kill the conversation. We were about twenty minutes away from where Max had picked me up in the middle of nowhere and we were now slowly winding our way downhill. The trees were starting to thin a bit, making room for more and more homes, hints of civilization, and fleeting glimpses of the ocean glittering ominously in the distance. I had to clench my hands together to stop myself from rubbing my forehead.

This was just too bizarre. There was no way Sean or Rachel could have pulled off this elaborate of a prank. The logistics of it were so beyond possibility that it made holding onto such a convenient explanation impossible to sit with—conscience-wise. There was no way either Rachel or Sean could have gotten me here without my knowing, not to mention the fact that, even between them, they didn’t have the time or funds to orchestrate such a stunt. Most importantly of all, however, was that neither Rachel nor Sean would do something so cruel to _anyone_ , let alone one of their closest friends. So, if that was the great ‘Prankgate’ theory quashed, the only explanation left was… what? How does Occam’s razor go… ‘The simplest explanation is usually the correct one’? If that were true and I was sure I wasn’t dreaming, the only ‘simple’ answer left was that I had travelled _magically_ all the way in California.

_Magic._

As if struck by lightning, I suddenly remembered what had happened before I had passed out. Well, some of it at least. “What day is it?” I blurted out impulsively as the realisation that had been itching at the fringes of my mind finally came into focus.

“Saturday,” Max said slowly, his voice taking on a heavy hint of caution.

“I mean the calendar day—what number, what year?” I clarified impatiently.

“It’s the 15th of June, 1985,” Max answered quickly. “Are you _sure_ you’re okay? I can take you to a hospital if you want—it’s no trouble at all.”

“No,” I dismissed a little too quickly. “I’m fine, really,” I amended to soften my reaction as I took another look at Max’s wardrobe out of the corner of my eye. The haircut, the big glasses, the loud clothes, the bygone era car, the lack of cell reception… It all fucking made sense—but how was it _possible?_

(At this point, I thought I heard Max whisper something like ‘somehow I doubt that’ but I couldn’t be sure: my ears had begun to ring.)

In the moment of clarity that had overcome me, I was finally able to fill in the blank spot in my memory that had been bothering me since I shrugged off unconsciousness. I remembered now that before I had passed out, it was true that Rachel, Sean, and I had been leaving the midway, but that wasn’t where things had ended. We had never made it to the parking lot: before we could reach Sean’s car, we had gotten sidetracked—well, Rachel had gotten sidetracked and took Sean and I with her. She had (forcefully) detoured us to see a Witch (with a capital ‘w’) and have our fortunes told. I had allowed myself to be pulled into the inconvenience thinking the whole experience would be a crock, just like the countless other Zoltar wannabes Rachel had made us see before, but instead… Instead, the Witch had been real. Melany the Witch was _real_. I could feel it in my soul as had I sat with her that she was in touch with something bigger than myself—something bigger the world as I knew it. And the prediction she had made: those, too, had _felt_ true, even though I now couldn’t remember exactly what they had been.

No matter how I tried, I could only recall the generalities of what Melany had told me. There had been something about sacrifices and changes—changes in me and, most importantly, changes in time _and_ place. At the time, her words seemed ridiculous: no one could change their position in time—place, sure, but not time. But as I hurtled down the backroads of the California coast in a boat of a sedan next to a man who looked as though he had stepped right out of an 80s issue of _People_ magazine, I couldn’t help but accept the fact that, somehow, the impossible had happened. And as much as I desperately wanted for any other answer than ‘magic’ to explain how I found myself in such a fantastical predicament, deep in my heart of hearts I knew that there was no other way to logic myself out of this problem. 

“‘Normalcy is an illusion’,” I muttered to myself, the words the only thing I could clearly remember from the conversation I had with Melany in her little vardo. It felt like a lifetime ago that I had met her.

“Hm?” Max asked offhandedly as we approached a large, splashy greeting board, his soft tone—the kind you might use to calm an out of control horse—violently pulling me back to reality. As we drew nearer to the uplit sign, I could see the words ’Welcome to Santa Carla’ scrawled out in a cheerful, sun-toned typeface overtop an equally bright and pictorial version of an unfamiliar seaside town. It was a happy scene that predominantly showcased a beach, sprawling green hills, and a few landmarks that must have qualified as places of interest.

“Nothing,” I deflected as we flew past the sign. I don’t know why, but as we blew past the billboard, I turned my head to watch it disappear. What I saw horrified me: among the pockmarks left by a host of would-be ‘artists’, the words ‘Murder Capital of the World’ were slashed across the billboard’s back in large black and orange graffiti block letters. And although they were just words (most likely put there by some stupid kids), something about the boldness of the claim left me feeling unsettled. “Is that true?” I asked without thinking (again) as I turned to look at Max.

“Is what true?” He questioned back easily, seeming to take no notice of the sign or the ominous message concealed behind such an idyllic face. 

“That Santa Carla is the ‘murder capital of the world’,” I clarified with guarded concern. 

“Ah, that,” Maxed laughed as he shook his head, the action almost indulgent. “No, that’s just kids with nothing better to do than destroy public property,” he smiled, taking half a heartbeat to flash me a fatherly smile before focussing back on the road. “Santa Carla is a very safe place to live.”

“That’s a positive, I guess,” I murmured quietly before twisting in my seat to take one last and unsure look back at the shrinking billboard. I watched the bright, Halloween-coloured warning shrink into obscurity for as long as I could see it; before long, the darkness swallowed up the sign as easily as it had released it. As we continued to stab further past the outer border of Santa Carla, more and more buildings began to spring up on either side of the road—sparsely at first, but they quickly amassed into a proper town. We wound through the avenues of a sleepy residential area until Max finally stopped outside of a store in a more lively area of town.

“Well, this is where I leave you,” Max said nonchalantly as he pulled the keys from the ignition and undid his seatbelt. Not wanting to linger, I did the same and exited the car as quickly as I could without tripping when Max let himself out. Standing out in the parking lot, I couldn’t help but look up at the large neon-red sign that beamed down upon us from on high, its message of ‘VideoMax’ spelt out in a stereotypical 80s-high-tech script.

“Thanks,” I said somewhat distractedly, looking away from the sign to smile pleasantly at Max across the top of the car.

“This is my business,” he smiled as if to say he understood my confusion. “Only place in Santa Carla to rent a videotape, though I also sell souvenirs,” he explained proudly.

“Oh, kind of like a Blockbuster,” I enthused, trying to be personable. Before he died, my dad and I used to go to the Blockbuster by our house every Friday to rent a videogame and a movie. We’d watch the film that night with my mom and then spend Saturday afternoons playing on our Sega Genesis (after chores were done, of course).

“Yeah, I’ve heard of that place down in Texas,” he replied almost begrudgingly, his brow furrowing behind his large glasses. “I don’t think they’re going to last.”

“I wouldn’t write them off just yet,” I said hinted with a smile. “But anyway,” I muttered before awkwardly patting the top of Max’s car, “thank you again for the ride.”

“My pleasure,” Max smiled pleasantly, seeming to have forgotten his hesitations about me. “You know, you could come into the shop if you wanted; I could give you some pointers about what to see and do around town—since you’re here as a tourist, after all.”

I looked from Max to the store beyond and then back to Max, (probably) reading a little too much into the eagerness I could feel in not only his invitation but also see in his grin. “I’ll have to pass, but thanks.”

“Oh, come on, now,” he countered with a small chuckle that seemed oddly tainted by a whisper of frustration. “You seem a little lost and I’d like to help,” he reasoned in his best ‘dad’ voice. “And besides, it’s not like I bite.”

I gave Max another quick glance, his friendly tone disarming me a little. He had been kind to me so far and he looked like he couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag, but… Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t put my finger on it—and perhaps it was just my own awkwardness screaming—but something about his insistence worried me. “Thanks,” I said slowly, the sudden and inexplicable urge to go inside almost overwhelming me, “but no. Maybe another time.”

… Why did you _say_ that!?

A hint of annoyance marred the understanding nod Max responded with. “Fair enough,” he allowed.

“So, I guess I’ll see you around…?” I said hesitantly, not wanting to seem rude even though I really had no reason to make such a promise.

“I guess you will,” Max smiled happily. “Feel free to drop by the store if you want to chat. I know how it is to be new in a strange place; it always helps to have a friend. I start work every night at eight o’clock.”

Although he seemed sincere in his invitation, I couldn’t shake the sneaking suspicion that I had already taken enough chances on this particular stranger for the night. “I might just take you up on that,” I laughed sounding a little more nervous than I intended. Not wanting to linger in the parking lot and open myself up to any more awkward conversation, I waved a fumbling goodbye before quickly turning my back to the neon glow of the VideoMax. Cut free again, I wandered down the street towards the middle of Santa Carla, trying to forget my situation if only for a moment. 

For being a small town, Santa Carla’s atmosphere was surprisingly lively—even so late at night: people were everywhere once I stumbled onto Main Street, their bronzed bodies practically glowing under the streetlights. Each way I turned, I saw beach-rustled hair, neon clothes, and happy faces. Relaxed-looking adults were enjoying the warm night air on the patios of the few restaurants and bars that were on offer; teenagers were out roving in packs, their laughter a joyful melody against the even baritone of the sea and the heavy humidity. And the more I watched the steady flow of the seaside town around me, the more I noticed the groups of people all seemed to be moving in the same direction as blood might through a vein to the heart. Looking away from the disjointed yet somehow cohesive groups of people around me, I saw where they were heading: toward the brilliant, looming beacon that dominated the horizon. I don’t know how I had missed it before but, now that I was paying attention, the bright lights of the amusement park seemed to blaze in the distance, calling out to me with a sort of familiarity and comfort—a promise of going back to where I had left my friends. Gravitating towards it like a moth to a flame, I fell into step with the bodies around me and allowed myself to be swept towards the noise and the glow and the energy.

Spit out by the tide of people, I tripped over the curb that outlined a massive parking lot outside the boardwalk. Hesitating, I surveyed the people milling around in-between the numerous cars that waited for their owners to return; some were even trickling down towards the sleepy beachfront. I could see bonfires blazing in the distance along the sand and shadowy figures dancing in the flickering light to music I couldn’t hear. Screams, laughter, and the buzz of a thousand different conversations hummed just under the roar of the rides and the upbeat music that blared over nearby loudspeakers. Within the safety of the boardwalk, kids were running around without their parents, teenagers were enjoying themselves with large groups of their friends, and there was even a concert going on somewhere. Though few in number, adults were here and there, enjoying food at restaurants and stands, shopping, and playing carnival games. If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn I was back where I belonged.

Trepidatiously, I stepped from the safety of the parking lot asphalt and onto the walk. People surrounded me on all sides, the tide of so many rushing bodies pulling me along against my will. I let myself be ushered onward, happy to just wander along with the flow and take in the atmosphere. But, after a while, I felt a deep sense of panic start to claw upwards from my guts and into my chest. As I looked around, people-watching and sight-seeing, I became acutely aware of just how out of _time_ I felt: every person and every object around me screamed wordlessly of a sort of otherness that I wasn’t a part of. And even though I by no means stuck out in the crowd, I could _feel_ that I didn’t belong—that I was apart from the world around me. The zeitgeist that permeated the very air seemed to clash with my very being, like a biting wind against bare flesh. Overcome with anxiety, I fought my way off onto the proverbial banks of the boardwalk river to try and steady myself. I wanted desperately for all of this to be a dream, but the longer I stood and took in the people and atmosphere around me, the more I realised I was more perturbed about the idea of being so completely alone than I was discombobulated over the fantastical connotations of how I had become so out of sync with everything. 

“Ya okay, cher?” A kind voice from my right asked. I flinched at the heavy and out of place Acadian-Creole accent that carried the words, turning to face the person who was apparently directly beside me. I hadn’t noticed when I had stopped that I parked myself just outside a game stall—the kind where you shoot water pistols to try and hit targets to win a prize. In the otherwise empty row of stools, there was a woman seated on the one nearest to me and she was looking up at me with a concerned expression. She had large brown eyes that were flecked with ochre and thick, dark hair that was tamed into neat braids which reached all the way down to her waist. She was dressed simply and purposefully in denim and a black t-shirt: her casual dress made her gold jewellery look all the more impressive. Rings covered her fingers, bangles hung from her wrists, and impressive hoops poked out from the artfully arranged plaits of her hair.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I apologised quickly, shying as far away as I could without being pulled back into the rush of foot traffic behind me.

“It’s alright,” the woman dismissed, her smile as warm as her voice. The way she spoke made me think of sultry, humid nights spent watching fireflies as they darted in and out of gently swaying curtains of Spanish moss on the bayou. “Ya just look a little… out of place,” she mused, choosing her words carefully. “Thought I would ask if ya needed somethin’.”

Get out of my head. “Thanks, but I’m fine,” I tried to assure her, but something about the sharpness in her deep, staurolite eyes made me think she knew I was lying.

“Just the same,” she shrugged, the quick and rustic sound of her voice both relaxing and fascinating, “ya ain’t from around here—I can tell.”

“What gave me away?” I laughed awkwardly, my cheeks flushing pink to match.

The woman smiled lopsidedly, the act heavy with silent, well-meant laughter. “I just have a sense for these things. Are ya lost, cher?”

“No, not lost,” I tittered, still sheepish. “Well, maybe in a way,” I corrected when the mysterious woman gave me a sceptical stare. “I just, uh… arrived. In town. I’m trying to get settled, I guess. This seemed like a good place to be.”

“For some,” the woman replied sagely as if she understood something I didn’t. “For others, not so much.”

“That’s ominous,” I laughed, though I knew she wasn’t making a joke. I couldn’t help but remember at that moment the similarly dark greeting that was slashed across the back of the proverbial welcome mat at Santa Carla’s doorstep. “I’ve heard Santa Carla is supposed to be a ‘safe place to live’.”

“Oh, it is,” the woman smiled kindly as if she was reassuring me the Easter Bunny was alive and well, “for those of us who know how to take care of ourselves, that is.” Here she fixed me with a pointed stare as if she was trying to get me to admit to knowing something—a secret—that we both should have been in on. Needless to say, I was simply left bewildered as to what she meant.

I couldn’t help but chuckle awkwardly under the weight of her gaze. I felt like I was being interrogated as she sat and toyed with her braids as she watched me fidget. “That’s good to know,” I tried to smile, but the act was forced and uncomfortable. Something about the way that the woman was looking at me made me feel like I was the hapless bystander in an action-comedy whose identity is accidentally mistaken for that of a very successful spy.

Here the woman seemed to consider me for a moment, her perfect brow furrowing as if she was trying to reconcile two pieces of conflicting information that were both touted as true. “Odd,” she mumbled to herself, the tiny word so heavy with a mix of astonishment and intrigue that I nearly confused it for a sigh. But just as quickly as consternation had lit her face, it disappeared, replaced by an easy, inviting smile. “Where are ya from, then?” She asked without missing a beat. “And what brings ya to a place like Santa Carla, cher?”

I froze like a deer in the headlights. How was I supposed to answer that!? “Um,” I fumbled, my cheeks burning hot with the impending lie that tripped across my tongue. “I, well, I’m from… Up… North,” I equivocated poorly. I was probably being over-cautious in not saying where I was from ( _when_ seemed more the issue), but I didn’t want to throw around that I was technically a foreigner without the paperwork to back it up. My driver’s licence (and phone) suddenly felt very heavy in my pockets.

“If ya don’t want to say, that’s fine,” the woman smiled, chuckling openly at my awkwardness. “Santa Carla attracts all kinds of folk. Ya gonna fit in just fine here, I think.”

“You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” I observed a little more playfully, happy I hadn’t been called out. 

“Perhaps,” the stranger hedged lightly, her eyes glittering mischievously as she shifted regally on the stool that supported her. Even though she was seated with a hackneyed carnival game at her back, I pictured her perfectly at home next to the likes of Queen Marie Laveau, doling out sage words from her seat before a grand altar to the ancestors. I felt compelled to ask for her advice.

“Any pointers for me, then?” I implored somewhat sarcastically, though I was suddenly very interested in what she had to say.

The woman looked at me for a long moment, her deep, soulful eyes seeming to see more than just what was before them. I couldn’t stop a small shiver from racing up my spine in the deafening quiet that fell between us. “Keep all ya wits about ya,” she said bluntly. “Ya gonna need them.”

Taken aback, I blinked, astonished. “O-okay,” I answered as my lungs stumbled over the sense of dread that exploded in my chest, “I’ll… do that.”

The strange woman looked long and hard at me in silence before shaking her head, seemingly perplexed as though she was still seemingly trying to reconcile two paradoxical pieces of information. Without another word, she got up from her seat and strode past me, taking her leave. 

“I never caught your name,” I called out hurriedly, nearly reaching out to grab onto the woman as she stepped away.

She stopped at the sound of my voice and paused before turning back to face me. Another heartbeat passed before she spoke as if she was debating whether to speak. “Élodie,” she said graciously, though her smile was tainted by trepidation. 

“I’m Felicia,” I replied quickly and with a childish smile. For some reason, I suddenly felt small and green in her presence even though she was at no best five years my senior and not more than ten centimetres taller. “It was nice to meet you.”

Élodie smiled back at me, her dark, beautiful eyes glittering in the bright strings of lights overhead. “The pleasure’s been mine, Felicia,” she replied warmly before turning on her heel and walking away.

I tried to watch her disappear into the crowd but lost her almost as quickly as I had found her in the first place. I stood there, somewhat stupidly, and scanned the crowd for Élodie’s figure, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t spot her again. It was as if she had vanished into thin air. It was puzzling and a little unsettling at the same time: I felt as if I had brushed up against something—some _one_ —that was beyond me, almost as you might feel after being in the presence of a ghost.

“Don’t forget your jacket,” an unfamiliar voice said suddenly, startling me back to reality. Whipping around, eyes wide, I saw the booth attendant watching me with a mildly-concerned look on his freckled face.

“My what?” I asked reflexively.

“Your jacket,” the heavy-set teenager repeated dubiously before pointing to one of the stools at the counter. I followed his direction downward and saw a handsome leather coat laying across the red-vinyl seats.

I couldn’t help but groan. “It’s not mine,” I explained. “It must belong to the woman who was just here.”

“Who?” The teenager asked dubiously.

“The woman who was just here,” I repeated with pointed amusement. “She was about my height, had dark braided hair, gold jewellery…?” As I described Élodie, the confused stare I was met with from the teenager behind the counter told me he had no idea who I was talking about. “She was _literally_ just here.”

The young boy looked at me as he was silently admonishing his senile old grandmother. “Right. No one’s been here for over an hour. You’ve been the only ‘customer’ I’ve had to deal with since I got back from my break.”

Now it was my turn to look confused. I glanced over my shoulder in the direction Élodie had left in hopes that I would see her rushing back towards me, but she wasn’t there. Looking back at the teenage boy (who was eyeing me peculiarly), I reached down to grab the coat and held it out to him. “Whatever. There’s a woman who will be coming back for this right away, I’m sure. So if you could just, you know, hold onto it until she gets back—”

“—I’m not the lost-and-found,” he denied quickly, backing away out of my reach. “Either take it or leave it for someone else to deal with. I’m not touching that.”

“It’s just a jacket,” I rebuked, brandishing the leather coat at him again.

“Hard pass.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes before tucking the coat under my arm to deal with myself. “Fine,” I growled, frustrated. “Where’s the lost-and-found, then?”

“There isn’t one,” the kid said back snottily.

Why I oughta… “Thanks for your help,” I said flatly before stalking away. Although I had no idea where Élodie had gone, I did see the direction she had gone, so I started heading that way too. Hopefully, the stars would align and our paths would cross again—if they didn’t, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I didn’t want to be accused of stealing, but what else was I going to do besides hold onto this stupid jacket for now? Something this nice would definitely grow legs and walk away on its own if I didn’t look after it… As I walked along, keeping to the edge of the crowd, I examined Élodie’s coat. It was a beautiful yet simple lady’s double rider motorcycle jacket made of high-quality leather that was soft as lamb’s skin but as hardy as rawhide. The bottom hem was adorned with a thick belt that would sit just on the hips of whoever wore it and the slightly-masculine shoulders were topped with looped leather epaulettes. Shiny silver zippers lined the openings of all the pockets (there were at least four that I could see) and raced up the angular 80s lapels. Oddly enough, it looked as if it was just my size and I found myself envious that I was only temporarily in custody of it.

Stopping off to the side of the flow of people once again, I really looked at the jacket. Rubbing the soft leather of the sleeve between my forefinger and thumb, I tried to decide what to do with it. The chances of my finding Élodie within the next few hours were as astronomically slim as my chances of going home again, yet the chances of this jacket _really_ getting stolen were exactly the inverse. The best thing I could do was hold onto it until I found its owner again which, if I thought about it, were better in the long run: Santa Carla didn’t seem that big and if Élodie was from ‘around here’, it was easy to reason that I would eventually see her at some point. So, by that logic, I was just looking after her coat, for now, to make sure something worse didn’t happen to it. And by the same extension, it didn’t make sense for me to carry it around like a lost book—I might as well wear it. It might help me fit in a little better and it would be harder to lose (again) that way.

Putting on the jacket was like slipping my hand into a tailor-made glove. The blood-red lining of the coat felt like silk against my bare arms and the entire coat seemed to hug my body perfectly. As the heavy leather settled in around me like a force field, I instantly felt a little more secure—a little safer. Without really thinking about it, I slipped my few belongings (my driver’s licence, my phone, and my father’s lighter) into the safety of the zippered pockets of my borrowed jacket and continued walking along with the crowd. As I moved along, strolling idly past fast-food stands, carnival games, and ride, after ride, after ride, I found it harder and harder to remember what Élodie had looked like. And the more faces that passed me by made me feel more as if I hadn’t really met her at all. Although I could remember a few fleeting details of the conversation we had, the substance of those details seemed like wet paper in my hands: the more I tried to hold onto them and focus on the words they bore, the more the information seemed to degrade and fall away. By the time I had reached a lull in the flow of foot traffic, breaking blindly away to the island of solace that existed at this end of the walk, I couldn’t even remember what name had been on the tip of my tongue—or why I was trying to summon into being it in the first place.

Opting to take a rest away from the eddy of bodies that gently swirled around me, I realised why there seemed to be so few people here: a carousel large enough to accommodate about seventy people at a time was situated about twenty meters away. All of the people that had come back this way were either on the revolving spectacle of animals and mirrors or waiting in line to get on. The gentle glow of the soft lights overhead as they gracefully twirled in orbit around the calliope organ at the heart of their universe made me smile in spite of myself. I couldn’t help but remember what it was like to be small as I stood and people-watched, entranced by the giddy faces of the children, bubbly laughter of the teens, and palpable relaxation of the adults who were enjoying a moment away from the hectic commotion that surrounded. Around and around they all went, the painted horses, rabbits, lions, birds, deer, and tigers seemingly alive and dancing with their charges beneath the flowered and scenic canopy above.

It was at that moment, I saw him.

Sure and graceful, he swung lithely between the prancing animals, smirking as he dragged his hand gently across the muzzle of a majestically-leaping wolf. He was glancing around methodically as he walked, his striking ice-blue eyes darting from face to face with a casual intensity as he wove through the posted figurines that surrounded him. I immediately got the impression that he was hunting for something or someone—and I pitied them. Whoever was the object of such thinly-veiled urgency was better off staying hidden; a threat of violence seemed to crack through his posture like electricity and it sent shivers sparking up my spine. But even so, the man wasn’t hard to look at by any means: tall and well built, his hair was styled in a surprisingly attractive short, spiked mullet (an oxymoron, I know), the platinum-blonde strands that crowned his proud head silver-white in the bright ambient light. A light scruff covered his strong jaw giving him a rugged edge that was echoed in the black wool duster he wore over a well-loved leather coat. Dark jeans, black leather chaps, dusty black cowboy boots, and a plain black tee completed his Cash-inspired ensemble, making his flawless skin seem milk pale.

Transfixed, I watched as the stranger continued to stalk his way around the carousel, slyly taking in each face he passed with a frightening exactness. Each time he disappeared out of sight as the merry-go-round continued to turn, I wasn’t sure if my heart sank with displeasure or relief; something about the way this man moved—about the otherworldly preciseness of his every step—made me both frightened and fascinated at once. And as time went by, I began to realise that, underneath the intrigue and fear I felt swirling in my chest, there was a sense of nagging familiarity nearing on _déjà vu_ that was trying to surface. I had seen this man before, my guts screamed—or, rather, I _knew_ him… Yet, at the same time, I hadn’t and I didn’t. His was as new a face to me as any of the others around me, but the more I watched him, the stronger the sense of familiarity in me grew, to the point that a name felt as though it was sitting heavily on the tip of my tongue. I chewed on that notion for a while, the unfamiliar yet easy shape of the word budding in my mouth both uncomfortable and pleasant at once. But, just as I was about to let that tender thorn fly free—

“—Sorry!” Someone—I think it was a man—exclaimed as they bumped roughly into me from behind, sending me reeling and nearly crashing nose-first into the ground. As I collected myself and turned (somewhat angrily) around to confront who had struck me, I found myself glaring, rather unexpectedly, at a bewildered-looking young woman.

Confused by my scowl, she immediately went on the offensive. “What?” She asked pugnaciously in a voice that obviously wasn’t the same one that had so unceremoniously knocked me off balance.

I hesitated, the incongruity between what I had been expecting to see and the pretty, dark-haired thing that was glaring back at me jarring. “Nothing,” I said, thoroughly disconcerted. “I thought you were someone else,” I murmured before turning back towards the carousel, my eyes immediately scanning for the man who had so captivated me. Unfortunately, the merry-go-round had finally stopped and all of the riders were disembarking, sending a fresh tidal wave of bodies rushing toward me (apparently, I was situated by the ride’s exit). I briefly contemplated waiting where I was to see if the man in the wool duster would walk past me, but I immediately thought better of it. What would I even say if I _did_ happen to catch his attention? ‘Hey, sorry to bother you, but I’ve just been practising my Michael Meyers impression and watching you like a total creeper. I know the answer is probably ‘no’, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I know you from somewhere? I feel like I’ve met you before.’

… Yeah, that would go over _really_ well.

Shuddering at the thought of my own imagined awkwardness, I quickly turned away from the merry-go-round and retreated back into the thick of the boardwalk crowds. Although I knew there was no way I stood a snowflake’s chance in Hell of running into him again, I endeavoured to put as much distance between myself and the carousel house as I could without running. Maybe it was because I was self-consciously embarrassed for being so ridiculously captivated by a complete stranger, but something else in me screamed that I needed to avoid getting any closer than I already had to someone so… _striking_. Just the thought of the way he moved—like some ethereal, prowling wolf—made the back of my neck prickle to attention with fear as I somewhat urgently picked my way through the crowds. And not just a nervous-schoolyard-crush type of fear as it felt on the surface, but a primal sort of fear: the deep kind of fear that turns your guts to jelly, makes your skin run cold, and sends your heart racing. The kind of fear that sparks at the thought of fending off a predator—a grizzly bear, a great white shark, or a mountain cat. The kind of fear that makes you feel small and weak and, most importantly, _mortal_ … Which was ridiculous, I scolded myself as I scurried away. He was just a guy—a handsome guy, no doubt, but still just a guy. Though, they said the same thing about Ted Bundy.

… Hm.

When I finally felt that I had fled far enough away from the carousel house, I took a second to flick my eyes up from the pavement. Counterintuitive, I know, but let me explain: somewhere in my genesis, I was blessed with the misfortune of being clumsy. And I mean _extremely_ clumsy. Most people assume that, because I still have one foot in the gymnastics world, I'm graceful. I mean, you have to be in some regard to not fall on your head when intentionally flipping ass over teakettle on a ten-centimetre-wide post nearly one-and-a-quarter metres off the floor, right? Wrong. Truth is, the second I step off of a balance beam, I become prone to tripping and falling. A lot. Crack in the sidewalk? I can trip on that. Perfectly smooth bit of carpet? I can stumble over that, too. Grass? You bet your ass I’ll find the only mole-hill within five-hundred metres and topple over it. To try and avoid making a flailing fool out of myself, I have picked up the (some would say ‘bad’) habit of staring at the ground when I walk. It’s saved me more than it’s caused me grief, but I would be lying if I said I had never walked into anything (or anyone) or never gone in completely in the wrong direction (more than once). Which kind of explains the situation I now found myself in.

When I looked up to check my bearings, I realised I was heading towards a rather isolated part of the boardwalk I had never seen before. Normally, this would have been fine (I really had nowhere in particular to be, per se), but not tonight—not after what (nay, _who_ ) I had just scurried away from. As soon as my eyes parted the pavement, my heart fell to my shoes: somehow, out of all of the places I could have wound up and out of all of the people that I could have bumped into, I had managed to find _exactly_ where the frighteningly-captivating man I had been ruminating on was hiding. What was worse, though, was that he wasn’t alone (not that I would have been any better off if he had been): now he was surrounded by three other men in their prime, each the definition of ‘80s punk rebellion’ and clustered about him as though they were receiving his council. And although they were clearly just a bunch of friends hanging about away from the prying eyes of the boardwalk security guards, I could help but think the four of them together looked like a pack of wild animals, lamenting over the meal that got away.

Distanced from the crowds of happy faces and surrounded by what I could only label as ‘his kind’, the man who had seemed so predatory on his own looked even more fierce than before—even when standing directly next to the most intimidating man out of his four counterparts. This quintessential (and somewhat literal) ‘right-hand man’ was about the same height as his icy-eyed leader, but the antithesis of him in every other way. He was built like a warrior, his defined and bare russet chest peeking out from the leopard-emblazoned leather jacket he wore. His long, raven-black hair was gently blowing around his determined face in the breeze, the thick curtain of it revealing glimpses of his deep, black-brown eyes and the heavy-looking necklace perched about his neck. Kitty-corner to this dark and brooding enforcer was the tallest man of the group (if only by a little), his lithe body perched dexterously on a railing and decked out in a showy draping of medallioned-chains, leather, fishnet, and safety pins. His golden-blonde hair was wild and long like a lion’s mane, giving the easy smile that was seated comfortably on his lips and mirrored in his bright, sapphire eyes a distinctive Cheshire-cat slant. The last man, though just about as tall as the others, was smaller than his more muscled compatriots and bare-faced where they all had five o’clock shadows. His tight cherub curls were quaffed into a mullet and a mischievous smile played on his lips as he leaned against the railing and chewed habitually on his exposed fingernails. He was sporting a flashy multi-coloured jacket that was plastered with patches and had three long, draping tassels attached as an epaulette on his left shoulder. And although he had bright and innocent-looking baby-blue eyes, something about the aggressive set to his jaw made a shiver race involuntarily up my spine. The only thing that I had going for me at this point was the fact that none of them seemed to have noticed me (yet).

“—this flea-bitten shit-hole is only so big; we just have to keep looking,” I heard the man in the duster hiss angrily, frustration plain in his eerily familiar voice. The four of them appeared to be deep in conversation, using the din that hung permanently over the boardwalk to mask the sounds of their schemings. I barely heard them talking as I happened upon them.

“Okay, dude. Whatever you say,” the man perched on the railing chimed in with a nonchalant chuckle, his friend’s anger rolling off of him like water off a duck’s back, “I just don’t think it’s gonna matter.”

“Nobody asked for your opinion, numbnuts,” the dark-haired man chastised flatly, earning himself a retaliatory flip of the bird from his friend.

“I just don’t see what the point is,” ‘numbnuts’ fired back with an overly-dramatic groan. “It’s just some chick,” he continued, ranting. “We could find a hundred broads just like her by walking down the goddamn street and I have a _million_ better things to be doing right now, so let’s just hurry the fuck up and get this over with!”

“That’s the point, you dipshit,” the slightest man of the four said pointedly, “it’s not just ‘anyone’. If it didn’t matter, we’d be out of here by now. For someone who’s supposed to be a ‘genius’—” cue the air quotes “—you’re fucking stupid sometimes.”

“Fuck you,” numbnuts cursed as he gave the slighter man an aggressively-playful shove. “It’s not like he’d be able to fucking tell anyway,” the man perched on the railing concluded with childish obstinance. “I can’t.”

By this time I had frozen, dead in my tracks, less than ten metres away. As intrigued as I was about whomever these men could have been discussing, I knew by the ice that had flooded my guts as I had approached the group of them that I needed to leave—and fast. I had already lingered for too long, my intuition screamed, and I was dangerously close to something that should be avoided at all costs. Instinctually, I tried to turn around quietly (albeit somewhat frantically) and power-walk off in the other direction before my accidental intrusion was detected… But this is me we’re talking about. So, as I shifted my weight and adjusted my footing to about-face, the toe of my shoe found an uneven spot on the ground and—

“—Shit!” I cursed as I tripped and stumbled forward instead of turning away. As I righted myself (thank _fuck_ I didn’t crash to the ground), I looked up to see four sets of extremely striking eyes set directly on me. But despite the multi-directional scrutiny I was under, I couldn't stop myself from staring directly back into the frigid gaze of the man from the carousel. His eyes held me as if by magnetics, the force and intensity of his mildly-shocked and mildly-relieved expression gripping me so intensely that I couldn’t help but let out a small gasp.

For a moment, time stopped.

We were all, apparently, caught off-guard and confused: no one was sure what to do as though I had accidentally happened on the lot of them preparing a surprise for me. For what felt like forever, we all just… hesitated, breath held, until I felt my cheeks flush ridiculously red with embarrassment. The sudden and burning heat in my face snapped me back to my senses, but also seemed to shock the others into action like sharks to the scent of blood. With a little more dexterity than I would have given myself credit for, I finally found the will to turn on my heel and sprint off in the other direction, heading as quickly as I could back towards the crowds.

“Wait!” One of the men yelled after me, his urgent call much closer than I would have liked. Immediately, I recognised the sound: it was the man from the carousel. And just like I had felt I knew his face when I saw him for the first time, I felt again that I somehow knew the sounds of his voice. The tune of it was like a long-forgotten song from my childhood ringing unexpectedly in my ears, the easy melody and intangible lyrics unsuited to the unfamiliar and jarring context they resurfaced in. I desperately wanted to turn around and pepper that voice—that face—with questions about how I possibly could have known him, but I was too embarrassed and afraid to stop running. So I ignored the pleas being thrown at my back and kept going, racing down the path I had so blindly forged with a prayer on my lips that I hadn’t strayed too far from the main thoroughfare. The sounds of the rides and the people felt so far away… 

“ _Stop!_ ” The man called out again, frustratingly not giving up the chase. This time, however, the single, harsh word was more of a command than a request and, strangely enough, I felt a twinge of an urge to comply. The fleeting feeling cracked through me like an unexpected electrical shock, the sudden and unexpected change in my senses unpleasant enough to keep me focused. No matter what, I had to make it back to the crowds, I told myself over and over again as the fear that had bubbled up in my chest boiled over into full-blown panic.

“ _STOP!_ ” My pursuer called out more forcefully, his tone now thoroughly vexed. It still made absolutely no sense to me, but as I neared closer and closer to the sound of the crowds that choked the boardwalk, I felt as though I was trying to outrun a pack of wolves on the hunt. The same chilling fear that had nipped at me as I stood on the sidelines of the carousel had returned, but this time I felt it a hundred-fold, the adrenaline that came with it spurring me to a frenzy. Every fibre of my being screamed that the men I had happened upon were more dangerous than they appeared and that the one who had so stunned me at first—the man who was hot on my heels—was the most deadly of them all (and also the most handsome… Yes, I said it; sue me). I just had to make it a little bit farther, I repeated, my mantra shifting: I could see the sea of bodies clearly in the distance now, the bright lights and sounds of the rides a promise of camouflage. Safety lies in numbers, my baser instincts shrieked. You _need_ to _hide_.

Finally, my heart racing with fear and exertion, I broke the shoreline of the river of bodies that coursed down the boardwalk. Only then, when I was surrounded on all sides, did I dare cast a glance over my shoulder at my pursuers. And to my great surprise, I found myself alone.

Where I was positive a moment ago that I could feel someone on the very fringes of my being—practically nipping at my heels as I bolted—I instead saw only the writhing sea that I had dove into for protection. Perturbed, I looked frantically around, searching for any sign of the four men (well, let’s be honest: the blue-eyed man in the duster) as if to validate the panic that still trembled through my body. But they were nowhere to be found. Not one of them. It was as if they had all vanished, leaving me feeling somehow less safe than I had before. At least being chased (and I was _sure_ they had been following after me), I knew where they were. But now… Now they could be anywhere, waiting around any corner or down some dark alley—

—Which was absolutely ridiculous to even consider, I chastised myself for what felt like the hundredth time. They were just people—four friends from a small town out enjoying the night. They had been minding their own business when I quite literally blundered upon them and there was no way in Hell they had chased after me with any sort of intent. Why would they? People don’t just randomly decide to run down strangers. And why the fuck would they be _waiting_ for me, let alone looking for me after I had been so awkward in the first place? They didn’t know me from a hole in the ground and I most certainly didn’t know them, even though something scratching at the back of my mind kept telling me I might. The long and the short of this whole farce was that I had grossly overreacted, my imagination obviously stuck in overdrive. Which made sense, as I thought more about it and tried to chase away the jitters that had settled into my chest with a few deep breaths. I mean, considering everything that had happened in the last few hours ( _ugh_ ), I shouldn’t be at all surprised that I was letting my brain be hijacked by such absurd delusions. After all, I was living one ( _ughhh_ ).

“I need some fucking sleep,” I groaned quietly with a sigh that was meant to calm my nerves. It didn’t do much to help. After one last quick and cautious scan of the area (and still no sign that… _they_ had ever even existed), I gently shook my head to try and clear it—both of the ridiculous notions that still picked at my nerves and the deep sense of worry that came with them.

Turning back towards the bright lights of the boardwalk entrance, I tried to focus myself on the real problem at hand and not the imagined one(s) that I had already poured too much energy into. Settling in for a _long_ rest sounded great right about now, but where the Hell was I going to lay my head? It wasn’t like I could just go rent a room at a hotel (let’s be real, a motel) or couch surf at a friend’s. I had no money and didn’t know a single soul well enough to beg for favours… But, then again, I countered to myself as I walked slowly through the crowds, the closeness of those around me somehow relaxing, Max seemed like the type of guy who could be persuaded to—no. No, no, no. Not even going there. I’d already risked enough by getting into his car—a perfect stranger’s car—and I didn’t need to push my luck further. As my already sour luck would have it, that would surely be a recipe for disaster. Besides, I didn’t want to give off any more ‘I’ll-take-any-help-I-can-get-because-I’m-desperate’ vibes than was absolutely necessary; that, too, was going to land me in trouble I didn’t need… No, I sternly concluded as I passed under the multi-coloured, neon sign and back out into Santa Carla proper, I could do this on my own. Without help. Without handouts. Without begging. I was smart and resourceful—everyone I knew had always said as much—and I prided myself on my independence. Surely, I would be able to figure something out if I tried…

… I hoped.


	3. Chapter 3

“SAY IT,” THE WIND hissed as it blew harshly through the trees and stirred my hair around my face. The campfire at my feet shuddered and flickered in fear making the shadows around me come to life.

“I can’t,” I answered apologetically back to the rustling leaves.

“ _Say it_ ,” the building gale demanded more forcefully as it whipped about me, kicking dust into my eyes as punishment. I quailed slightly under the assault, the cold that came in on the air chilling me to my core.

“How can I?” I pled. The wilderness answered my insolence with a violent buffeting that made the trees shiver with cowardice. The mountains in the distance even seemed to shrink with respect. “How can I when I don’t remember!?” I called out desperately against the cutting rebuff, trying to rationalise with the wind. It was a mistake.

“ _SAY IT!_ ” The storm roared with enough violence to extinguish the pitiful fire before me as though it were merely a candle. Plunged into darkness, I curled into myself for protection from the frost carried on the keening squall, afraid to look up from my knees as the air crashed and swirled against my fragile body.

“I don’t remember,” I whispered brokenly to myself.

“Yes, you do,” a strangely-familiar voice answered pointedly.

Looking up as though I had been electrocuted, I peered out into the deepness of the night and found myself confronted with a silhouette of a man lurking in the distance, just on the edge of the woods. Instantly, my guts filled with ice, reminding me sharply of my own vulnerability. “Who’s there?” I ordered, my voice tight with alarm.

The shadow of a man shifted in the trees, stalking nearer to me like a wolf on the prowl. “Say my name,” the dark figure insisted, his voice caught between an enticing purr and a frustrated growl.

“I don’t remember it,” I confessed in a whisper, paralyzed with terror as I watched the agent of my destruction creep closer.

“Lying doesn’t suit you,” the stranger crooned dangerously, his voice so familiar and strange that it sent shivers running up my spine.

“I’m not lying,” I rebutted, though I instantly knew the words were untrue. I could feel a name taking shape in my mouth, the form of it awkward and foreign, but also easy and familiar—like the name of a lover. Unsettled, I held tightly onto the syllables, locking them inside of me for fear of what might happen if they were let out into the world.

The shadow hunting me from the trees seemed to smile. “Say it,” he bid again as he stalked ever nearer, his closeness sending a primal shock of fear shooting through me. Hesitant to make even the smallest sound, I bit my tongue and tried to destroy the word that was held prisoner there. Seeming to sense my guilty apprehension, the beast in the dark pressed nearer. “You know you want to,” he whispered as he closed in, his voice warm and enticing like honied poison.

“But you’ll kill me,” I managed to reply in a hush, the assertion barely making it past my lips instead of the sweet curse I held back.

“Exactly,” the monster in the night answered pleasantly, his icy blue stare spearing me to the ground through the enveloping blackness.

o-o-o-o

It was well past noon when I woke up. The late-day sun was streaming in through the boarded-over windows in broken shafts, highlighting the thick miasma of dust that swirled like smoke in the air. For a moment as I opened my eyes, I was lost: I didn’t recognise where I was as I stared over at the bleached and peeling floral wallpaper across from me, the late 70’s ode to decay unfamiliar and confusing. Panicked adrenaline shot through me as my eyes darted around, trying to find a familiar anchor point, but as the seconds ticked by and I quickly shook off the sluggish fog of slumber, I remembered. Groaning, I pushed myself up off the dingy, mustard-coloured carpet I had curled up on the night before and tried to get the smell of mould out of my nose with a few deep, tickling breaths. It was no use, though: the dense, putrid odour permeated everything inside the little abandoned-house-turned-hostel as an invisible and inescapable cloud of perfume.

Sitting cross-legged on the stinking carpet I had made my bed, I rubbed my eyes to clear away the sleep that clung there and then stretched my arms to try and relieve the snarling tightness in my muscles. In retrospect, aside from the aching in my body, my first night spent homeless went more smoothly than I anticipated… That is if you only take into consideration everything that happened _after_ I fled the boardwalk (everything before then was, quite simply, a hot mess). I had busied (/distracted) myself for a few hours with trying to find a place to settle in for the night after putting the bright lights and crowds well behind me. Luckily after much wandering, I managed to stumble on an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. All of the windows and the front door were boarded over, so I assumed no one would mind my presence as I slipped inside through the ajar sliding door over the back porch. After taking a quick look around to make sure no one else was already bunkered down for the night, I made camp in the smallest of the three bedrooms where I figured I would attract the least attention. I fell asleep almost instantly after curling up on the musty-smelling floor.

Desperate for fresh air and eager to escape the depressing gloom that lingered in the corners of my hovel, I quickly picked myself up and carefully crept back out into the world. The heat of the sun as it hung low over the horizon was fierce, so I stripped off my jacket and tied it around my waist. With little else to do, I decided to slowly work my way back through the maze of small-town streets, taking in the lay of the land as I went. The outskirts of Santa Carla were sleepy compared to the infectious buzz of activity that seemed to hang over the boardwalk regardless of the time of day. I didn’t see very many people as I traversed the quiet suburbs, but the people I did pass on my way paid me little mind. They were busy with their lives: watering sun-scorched flowers, tinkering on their vehicles, playing jump-rope on the sidewalk, carefully waxing surfboards, and lazing with their friends on front porches. ‘Downtown’ Santa Carla was, however, a much different story.

As I casually wandered further into town, the buildings grew closer together and so too grew the crowds. Within two kilometres of the boardwalk, I could feel the rate of the town’s pulse change: a palpable and excited kind of energy hung in the air, just barely hidden beneath the smell of the sea. Every person I passed seemed to have a smile on their sun-kissed face and somewhere to be, whether it was relaxing on the beach, being seen at the ‘it’ new sea-side hangout, or deep in the throws of the boardwalk proper. Although Santa Carla was by no means a large town, the flood of sun-seeking tourists and California-cool denizens that swarmed her streets made it feel as though she was somehow more than what showed on the surface. Maybe it was because of the neon colours, bold patterns, and big hair that seemed to abound every which way I looked, but something about this place—this little slice of coastal utopia—made me suspect that something was hiding beneath these loud claims of modesty. And the more time I spent wandering Santa Carla’s veins and arteries, the more I felt as though I was walking on a razor-thin line between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’... Despite the happy faces that abounded and the quaintness that seemed to exude from the very pavement, it was as though a dark wildness was lurking just beyond the town’s carefully-maintained façade. Every building, every car, every crack in the pavement screamed so loudly of its own banality as if trying to convince those who accidentally looked to close that nothing was amiss. It made me oddly uncomfortable, I just didn’t know _why_ … But, then again, maybe that was just my nerves talking: I was far away from anywhere (anywhen?) I could _remotely_ consider ‘home’, so of course, I would feel uneasy.

By the time I decided to take a rest, I had traversed nearly every inch of town that I could see without getting into trouble. Although people were still on the beachfront as I plunked myself down on a sea-facing boulevard bench (‘In Loving Memory of Linda S., 1952-1974’ read the salt-worn bronze dedication), you could tell that the day was coming to a close. Families were packing up to leave instead of staking out camps on the sand and more cars were exiting parking lots than were entering them. The growling of my stomach also told me that it was about dinner time, especially for someone who neither ate breakfast nor lunch. I couldn’t help but watch longingly as a small boy dumped out the dregs of his french fries onto the sand and giggled gleefully as they were immediately set upon by a swarm of gulls.

“Ugh, what a fucking waste,” I mumbled bitterly to myself, slightly embarrassed that I was jealous of a bunch of stupid, trash-eating birds. My stomach grumbled audibly as if to rebuke me for being so pernickety. And it was right: I was in no position to be so choosy. As my grandfather used to say: _“Faute de grives, on mange des merles”_...

“Language,” an unfamiliar voice growled as I felt an abrasive and heavy _tap-tap_ on my shoulder.

Spinning around, I found myself confronted by a rather portly man in a beige and brown uniform. He had a thick caterpillar of a moustache perched on his upper lip—probably to disguise the fact that his mouth was somehow too small for his thick face—and beady brown eyes. He didn’t look friendly to begin with, but the glower he was giving me from under his dark ‘Security Guard’ cap and tinted aviators intensified the strict demeanour he exuded. “Sorry?” I half-asked-half-apologised, confused by his apparently instant dislike for me.

“Don’t give me attitude,” he barked again before giving me another prod in the meat of my shoulder with his nightstick. Clearly, someone took their job a little too seriously _or_ their authority had gone ever so slightly to their head… 

I inched away down the bench, palms open as if to say I meant no harm. “Look, I’m sorry. I—”

“—You punk kids are all the same,” he interrupted as he threateningly waggled his baton in my general direction. “You think you can get away with whatever you please just because you stick some metal in your face and wear crazy clothes. Well, let me tell you: not on my watch, you won’t!”

… _Or_ both. Definitely both. “Right,” I agreed hesitantly, unsure of what else to say lest I get myself deeper into trouble with such a megalomaniac.

“I’ve got my eye on you, missy,” the security guard growled as he narrowed his eyes at me in a hard stare. “Now, move along.”

Taken aback, I gaped at him. “What!? I’m just sitting here! You can’t do that: you’re not even a police offi—”

“—Loitering is against boardwalk policy,” he snapped with a threatening jab towards my sternum with his billy club, “and so is foul language.”

And fun, too, apparently. Fucking wanker. “But I’m not _on_ the boardwalk,” I asserted pointedly.

“Maybe not,” the security-guard-come-David-Douglas-‘Dave’-Brown-impersonator sneered before slapping his straightstick into his meaty palm with a _thwack_ , “but I’m the one with a baton, girlie, so move it.”

Casting a quick glance around to see if any other sane human could see how preposterous my situation was, I found that I was alone. “Fine,” I hissed under my breath, deciding to leave was the best option next to getting myself arrested (somehow). Backing out from under the combative stance of Paul Blart’s evil twin, I briskly picked myself up off the bench and stalked furiously away. I didn’t give the contemptible man at my back a second glance as I powered my way down the sidewalk, away from the nearby lights of the seaside amusement park that loomed in the distance.

Following my feet without much thought, I wandered around town and fumed. The beast of my indignation screamed that I should go straight back to the boardwalk and file a complaint with whatever sham of a security company which kept the place ‘safe’, but my practicality angel muzzled it swiftly enough. Going to do something so impulsive—albeit completely fucking justified—was a quick way to get into deeper trouble. Filing a complaint would surely mean giving out my name and (non-existent) contact information and I couldn’t risk letting anyone know more about me than was necessary. I mean, sure, I could try to _lie_ , but I knew that would just backfire on me—and probably in spectacular fashion to boot. It wasn’t hard to picture myself being asked to give out a phone number by some well-meaning secretary and me blurting out ‘0118 999 881 999 119 725… 3’ because I couldn’t think of anything else. And besides, I really didn’t want to go back to the boardwalk tonight (or really ever) in the first place. My gut instincts told me that, if I did, I was surely going to run into _that man_ again—the one with the piercing ice-blue eyes that gave me the absolute weirdest sense of _déjà vu_ and not to mention scared the living daylights out of me… No way I wanted to repeat the fiasco I had (accidentally? purposefully?) caused. I barely made it to safety last night anywa—no, no, no, I chastised myself again. Stop thinking like that. Those guys from the boardwalk were just that: men. You keep talking about them as if they’re a pack of wolves escaped from the local zoo—which is _ridiculous_. They probably just wanted to make sure that you were okay; why else would they have run after you? After all, you did almost fall flat on your face, Flic. Normal people are generally sympathetic when your ‘otherworldly grace’ decides to dazzle unassuming spectators, so why wouldn’t they be?

Because they _are_ animals, something deep in my soul whispered. Wild things. Dangerous things. Creatures on the hunt. Beasts to be avoided at all costs—if you want to live.

I shuddered in spite of myself, the act snapping me out of my thoughts. When I looked up from my feet (which I had been obliviously following for a very long time, apparently), I found myself standing on the sidewalk on the far side of the VideoMax parking lot. Awash in the bright red glow of the big neon letters overhead, I briefly considered immediately continuing on my way. Something about returning to see a stranger who I barely knew seemed… _off_. Maybe it was because Max was easily ten years my senior and seemed a little too eager to get to know me—a vagabond with a spotty memory ‘out for a walk’down a dark country road. But, then again, he had picked me up and taken me safely out of the wilderness, leaving me to go on my merry way without touching so much as a hair on my head. That had to be worth points in his favour, right? If he had wanted to hurt me, he had plenty of opportunities to do so. Hell, I had practically told him I didn’t know where we were going; he could have taken me to Timbuktu and I wouldn’t have known the difference. Maybe I was just being overly paranoid and cautious. Talking to strangers, after all, is the only way to make new friends…

“What’s it going to hurt?” I asked myself under my breath as I stepped off of the sidewalk and crossed the parking lot towards the VideoMax’s doors. Without giving myself a chance to over-think it, I yanked open one of the heavy doors and went inside. The VideoMax was more impressive on the inside than it was on the outside. Racks of videos lined the two side walls while the back wall was covered in large TVs that were silently playing cartoons, rock music videos, and clips from just-released films. Neon signs blinked here and there making the cardboard cutouts of popular-at-the-moment movies characters that dotted the space change hue. Decorative plastic silhouettes of television sets, film reels, and stars hung from the ceiling around the checkout counter and black and white tiles covered the floor. Upbeat music was playing softly in the background, filling the void left by the muted televisions. A pretty blonde girl with waifish features was minding the checkout counter; she was flipping absently through a copy of _Vogue_ with one hand and leaning on the other, her delicate fingers tapping along to the beat of the background music against her thin cheek. There were a few other people in the store, but Max wasn’t one of them insofar as I could see after a quick glance around. Disappointed yet somehow relieved, I wandered around and browsed the videos to kill some time before leaving. Strolling quietly over to the nearest shelf, I picked up the first video that caught my eye—Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.

“That one’s scary; I don’t know if you’ll like it,” Max whispered from my left, the sound of his voice making me nearly jump straight out of my skin. It took everything in my power to put the movie case back on the shelf instead of clocking him with a reactionary punch in the nose. Punching Max didn’t seem like a good way to make friends.

“You think?” I asked sceptically after restarting my heart. For the better part of a decade, Rachel, Sean, and I would have movie marathons on Halloween, cramming in as many instalments of the Friday the 13th series as we could into one evening since we were too old to be going out trick-or-treating. Not to brag, but I had seen A New Beginning at least two dozen times and I found it more laughable than scary at this point.

“If you’re so brave, why don’t you rent it, then?” Max teasingly asked with a laugh. He picked up the movie again and held it out to me.

“Thanks, but no,” I dismissed as amicably as I could, crossing my arms to hide my hands and end the discussion. “I’m not in the mood for a slasher flick. But thanks,” I tacked on again with a small smile. I didn’t have a better way to explain that I quite literally couldn’t: a) afford to rent a movie; or b) play it even if I _could_ afford it. _Chez Felicia_ might not have boasted the best nor the most modern of accommodations, but the cost of a room was so amazing it might be considered criminal.

Obviously disappointed, Max sighed lightly before he casually put the movie back on the shelf. “Well, that’s too bad,” he said with genuine well-meaning. “Maybe something else then? I just got a few extra copies of The Breakfast Club in—if that’s more your style.”

I was too embarrassed to look Max in the eye so I turned to pretend to browse the movies on the rack behind me. “Thanks, but no,” I repeated, playing the broken record. “I’m happy just looking around right now.”

“Well, if anything jumps out and bites you—”

“—I’ll let you know,” I said softly, hoping Max wouldn’t notice the embarrassed flush that had risen in my face.

“Good. So, Miss Felicia,” he said lightly, trying to make conversation, “how did you like your first night in Santa Carla?”

“It was… interesting,” I equivocated as I picked up a movie with zombies on the front. I read the title three times but never actually took in what it said; I was too busy trying to think ten steps ahead of Max.

“Where did you spend the night? There are a few terrible motels in town; I’d hate to know you’re spending too much for a place to stay.” Max’s gaze was pointed when I glanced at him over my shoulder. I could tell he was intentionally trying to catch me in a lie.

Damnit. How was I supposed to answer that?!

Placing the cassette in my hand back on the shelf, I thumbed through some other titles to stall. As I blindly looked at the glossy cases, I tried to come up with a lie. Even a small place like Santa Carla would have a name-brand hotel, right? “The, uh… What’s it called—it starts with an ‘s’,” I muttered, hoping to get Max to answer the question for me. “It’s right on the tip of my tongue,” I bluffed awkwardly when he remained silent.

“You mean the Super 8?” Max asked back casually.

“ _Thank you!_ That’s the one,” I laughed in that self-deprecating way that only someone who’s completely embarrassed can. “I can’t believe that slipped my mind. It was—”

“—Felicia,” Max interrupted in his best ‘disappointed dad’ tone, “the nearest Super 8 is in San Jose.”

If you listened closely enough, you would have heard the _thump_ of my stomach dropping to my toes. “Oh?” I said bemusedly, my dumbfounded surprise genuine as I continued to thumb nervously through the film cases. “That’s right: it wasn’t a Super 8. Stupid me. It was a… A, um—”

“—Felicia…”

That’s my name; don’t wear it out. “… Yes, Max?”

“There are only mom-and-pop places in Santa Carla.”

… Shit. “Right,” I said absently, my hand hovering on The Freakmaker.

Now what?

“Where did you spend the night?” Max repeated, his voice stern as if he was my dad and scolding me for coming home after curfew.

I shrugged trying to act nonchalant about the whole thing. “I found somewhere to lay down, don’t worry,” I deflected, flipping the movie I was handling over to make it look like I was examining the back cover. The words were an unintelligible mess before my eyes as I tried to ignore the shame that gnawed hard on my stomach, intensifying the flush already stained on my cheeks.

“Why didn’t you say something to me?” Max sighed accusatorially as if that should have been an obvious thing for me to do.

“Because I’m not stupid,” I replied acerbically, as I roughly put the cassette case in my hand back in its place. “Aside from the fact that you were nice enough to give me a lift into town,” I continued, turning back to face Max, my embarrassment easily burned away by the fire of my indignation, “I don’t know anything about you. I’m not in the habit of asking strangers for a place to stay—that’s a quick way to get yourself killed.”

Max’s laughter in response to my caustic rebuttal threw me off. “When you’re right, you’re right,” he chuckled before wrapping his arm around my shoulders. I resisted, uncomfortable at suddenly being pulled so close to him, but Max easily drew me away from the horror section as though I was a small child under his wing. Upon stopping next to the glass-topped checkout counter, Max let go of me and stood up a little more rigidly as he fixed the clerk with an authoritative stare. She didn’t take notice. “Kimberly,” he said pleasantly after a subtle clearing of his throat to catch her attention.

The young woman—she couldn’t have been more than twenty at best—looked up, startled, from the glossy pages of an ‘article’ about the latest Paris fall trends. “Yes, Max?” She asked sheepishly, knowing full well she had been caught slacking red-handed. In an attempt to cover her shame, she discretely closed the magazine in front of her and stuffed it under the counter into what I could only assume was its hiding place.

“Don’t you have stock to be dealing with in the back?” Max asked with all the pointed friendliness of a well-meaning boss. “That Hershey's order isn’t going to unpack itself…”

“Right,” the young girl nodded before casting me a wary up-and-down glance. “Who’s this—a new hire to replace Patricia?” She asked with a hint of disdain.

“I’ll mind the register while you’re in the back, Kimberly,” Max directed with a smile instead of answering the question.

“Okay,” Kimberly apologised half-heartedly. She cast me another suspicious glance before locking the cash register and scurrying off. Max watched her leave only to sigh and shake his head indulgently once she was out of sight. Seeming to forget the interaction almost immediately, Max returned his full attention to me for a split second before he reached behind the counter to grab something. I don’t know why, but my heart stopped when his hand disappeared… My alarm was unfounded though: a second later, Max produced a giant glass blow that was brimming with neon-coloured suckers. With a comically exaggerated flourish, Max then extended the candies to me—it was a peace offering. “My apologies for not considering things from your perspective. Please, have one.”

I hesitated, giving the suckers a distrusting stare. I was about to refuse when my stomach twisted hungrily, changing my mind.

“They aren’t poisoned,” Max chuckled as I silently deliberated what colour of sucker to pick.

“Oh, darn; those are my favourite kind,” I uttered sarcastically, earning another friendly laugh from Max. Plucking out a red candy from the bowl, I quickly pulled off the cellophane wrapper. “Thanks,” I smiled sincerely before popping the sugary treat into my mouth. I hadn’t eaten anything in what felt like aeons, so the artificial cherry sucker satisfied better than it had the right to.

“So,” Max sighed as he placed the bowl back in its hiding place, “why are you here?”

Gee, I don’t know, _dad_ : how many existentialists _does_ it take to screw in a light bulb?

I sucked on my candy for a moment, returning Max’s thoughtful stare. I wasn’t sure if he meant ‘here at his store’ or ‘here in town’, so I decided to be equally vague. “I needed a change of scenery,” I shrugged. “I mean, seriously: you stab _one_ handsy guy and suddenly your business is _everyone’s_ business—I’m kidding,” I said flatly when Max’s face withered.

Max gave me a reproachful glare, though the small smile that twitched once again at the corners of his mouth ruined his façade. “Very funny,” he chastised.

I shrugged and smiled impishly around my lollipop by way of reply, hoping to end the conversation.

Leaning against the counter in what I could only assume was an attempt to seem non-threatening as he continued his overly-fatherly interrogation, Max locked me in a calculating stare. I suddenly felt as though he was reading me like a book and a chill ran up my spine. “You really are here all alone, hm?” He mused in the way your mother or father might when they know they’ve caught you in a lie.

“So?” I asked back somewhat coldly, my patience for such a personal line of questioning dying before it could live.

Max shifted uncomfortably as if he knew he had touched a sore spot, but decidedly chose to tread lightly onward _towards_ the danger. “You just don’t seem the type,” he placated with parental concern. “Rather, you seem a bit out of place, Felicia.”

I _wanted_ to tell Max to kindly take his pity and shove it, but instead, I sucked on my candy and kept silent for a moment. It didn’t seem like a brilliant move to alienate the only half-decent person I knew in all of Santa Carla. “I’m new here,” I hedged around the sweet in my mouth, though I was still uncomfortable as if I was being cross-examined by a ruthless lawyer. I didn’t like Max’s insinuation that I didn’t seem to ‘fit’ here—it made me feel that my secret wasn’t as safe as I wanted to keep it. “At least give me a few days to get settled before you call me out on it,” I bargained as jovially as I could despite the fact it felt like there was a pile of rocks in my gut.

“A fair ask,” Max conceded kindly. Reaching over the counter again, Max pulled out a random second sucker from his stash. Ripping off the wrapper, he saluted me with the candy. “To settling in,” he offered pleasantly.

“Cheers,” I replied, tipping my waning candy at him before putting it back in my mouth. Leaning on the glass countertop, I looked out the store’s large front window, watching people and the occasional vehicle go past. I needed a way to make my exit, but I wasn’t sure how. Coming here felt like a mistake: the way Max was watching me—I could _feel_ his speculative stare on me—was unnerving. Somehow, he knew more about me than he was letting on and the idea made me nervous.

“I’m starting to feel like I’m playing bad-cop,” Max laughed as he discarded his hardly-touched candy in a wastebasket behind the checkout counter. I couldn’t think of anything smart to say, so I just twirled the plastic stick in my mouth absently between my fingers, using the friction of my tongue to send the last remnants of my candy into fake-fruit-flavoured oblivion.

“I have one last question—I promise,” Max laughed when I glared at him out of the corner of my eye, “and then I want to introduce you to someone.”

What now, Constable Nosey? “I can’t promise I’ll answer you, but alright.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“Yes,” I fibbed. However, my stomach snarled audibly as I spoke, ratting me out as if it were yelling that a sucker didn’t count as a meal. Obstinately, I chewed on the inedible candy carcass I held onto as though that would somehow abate my hunger.

“Nice try, but I heard that,” Max stage-whispered, using his best ‘dad’ tone. “Let me buy you some food—a sandwich or a burger or something.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I dismissed as politely but firmly as I could. “I don’t need pity money: I can take care of myself.”

Max tutted at me, unperturbed. “Don’t be stubborn. It’s not ‘pity money’, it’s ‘food money’—they’re two very different things.”

“I can’t pay you back,” I rebutted, equally determined. I didn’t want to start taking handouts: I was better than that. I could make ends meet… somehow or another. I would find a way to. I _had_ to.

“Well, then don’t think of it as a _loan_ , per se. Think of it as…” Here Max paused, trying to come up with a softer word to use. “Think of it as a _gift_ ,” he concluded a second later, triumphant.

I hate that word. Nothing’s ever free… “No, I couldn’t—”

“—It’ll be our little secret,” Max interrupted as he produced his wallet and fished out twenty dollars. “Take it,” he enthused, brandishing the bill at me as he put away his wallet with his free hand. “Please,” he smiled when I stared warily at the well-creased picture of Andrew Jackson.

“That’s too much,” I began, waving him away in refusal. Fast as lightning, Max reached out, grabbed my right hand, placed the note into my palm, and gently closed my fingers around it. His skin was cold against mine—like ice. I couldn’t help but jump in surprise and try to withdraw from him, but Max held firmly onto me as if I hadn’t flinched at all.

“Remember: it’s a _gift_ ,” Max laughed before he finally relinquished my hand. “Just don’t get yourself hurt,” he instructed in a way I could only describe as ‘fatherly’. “That’s payment enough in return.”

“I—but… Thank you,” I murmured, trying to look grateful instead of ashamed.

“You’re most welcome,” Max smiled. “Now, I want you to meet a close friend of mine.”

“Okay,” I said slowly as I crumpled the note roughly into my pant pocket, eager to get it out of my hand. The piece of paper sat there like a boulder.

Sticking his forefinger and thumb between his lips, Max let out a sharp whistle. Immediately, I heard the familiar sound of claws and paws slipping and clacking on tile from near the back of the store. “This is my dog, Thorn,” Max beamed, gesturing towards the floor as a massive white dog that looked to be a cross between a white shepherd and an Arctic wolf came skidding around the corner. Stopping obediently at Max’s side, the dog sat and stared sternly at me, his intelligent brown eyes shining like two small fires. “Say ‘hello’, sleepyhead,” Max said down to the mammoth beast. Thorn gave a deep, rumbling bark before letting his tongue loll cheerfully out in a dog’s smile.

“Hi, Thorn,” I said quietly. Leaning down to the dog’s level, I cautiously held out my hand for him to smell. Bridging the gap between us, Thorn sniffed each of my fingers in turn. Seemingly happy with what he had learned, he then pressed his head forcefully into my hand, demanding pets. I happily obliged: Thorn’s fur felt like the finest silk under my hand. I nearly got lost in stroking the dog’s gigantic head, rubbing his velvet-soft ears, scratching his cheeks, watching the sparkle in his deep, brown eyes… When Thorn grumbled a contented sigh, I seemed to pop out of a trance and remember where I was. Standing up embarrassed for ignoring Max, I stuffed my hands into my jacket pockets so as to keep them to myself. “He’s a very nice dog,” I smiled, suppressing a laugh when Thorn whined unhappily at me for prematurely ending his massage session.

“He is. He’s also very protective of me,” Max chuckled as his dog dutifully (if not a little dejectedly) re-assumed a more watchful, alert posture. 

“I bet he comes in handy around here—seeing as, apparently, Santa Carla is the Murder Capital of the World,” I said sarcastically, earning an agreeing bark from Thorn.

Max smiled down at his dog, though the act was somehow tainted by a sly sort of gloating as though he was enjoying some private joke. “You have _no_ idea,” he answered playfully, ruffling Thor’s ears when the huge white canine pressed his head affectionately into his owner’s hip.

I chose to ignore the subtle gibe. Feeling suddenly awkward for no apparent reason, I decided I had finally overstayed my welcome. It was time to go; I didn’t want to seem desperate for company. “Well, Max, thanks again for the sucker and the… The ‘gift’,” I started, only to be interrupted by the cheerful ringing of the bell above the entrance behind me. I didn’t really think anything of the sound, nor the noisy entrance of what sounded like a group of people, until Max’s face fell and Thorn began to growl. The low, dark, and thunderous rumble that issued from what had not moments ago been a happy-go-lucky companion made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Think nothing of it,” Max said absently, his voice trailing off as his gaze shifted past me. 

I turned around to follow Max’s stare only to feel my heart freeze. Standing before me, surrounded by his three striking friends, was the blue-eyed man from the boardwalk carousel. Together, the four men made a formidable roadblock as they lingered just inside of the store, quite conveniently obstructing the only door in or out of the VideoMax. The force of their collective scrutiny fell on me like a spotlight and, at that moment, I would have given anything to vanish into thin air or melt into the floor. But I had nowhere to run this time. Instead, I could do nothing more than stand, stalk still, as I was again swallowed by a sense of primal panic—the same all-consuming sense of dread and danger that had overtaken me the night before. The inexplicable terror that their mere _presence_ inspired welled up in my chest, catching the air in my lungs. I fought to suppress a shiver as my entire body rippled with gooseflesh as I stared directly at the blue-eyed man who has so captivated me the night before, caught like a frightened rabbit as he studied me, the half-smirk on his lips both satisfied and somehow relieved.

“I thought I told you lot not to come in here anymore?” Max threatened stonily from behind me, the deep and angry sound of Thorn’s accompanying warning growls underscoring the leaden silence that had fallen over the store.

The blonde man’s eyes lingered on mine for a moment, the ice of his gaze freezing me to my core, before he met Max’s baleful stare and grinned impishly. “Really? I don’t remember,” he teased defiantly, earning a round of jeering snickers from what I could only label as his ‘packmates’. I shivered at the sound of his voice, the eerie wave of familiarity that it sent flashing through me nearly as terrifying as the mere presence of him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Max bristle at the flagrant display of insubordination. Thorn also seemed to take exception to such a blatant act of disrespect: he let out a single, snarling bark as a final warning, the hellish sound like a crack of thunder. “Let this be a reminder, then,” Max said coldly, unimpressed. “I won’t tolerate you misfits hanging around here and harassing people.”

“The pretty red-head who works here didn’t seem to mind us,” the lithe man with the wild blonde hair quipped lasciviously, the strangely dark insinuations behind his words aimed at Max.

“Yeah, where is _Pattie_ , anyway?” The curly-haired man mused pointedly, the laughing smile on his lips unkind and frightening. “I promised to show her a good time.” Here he winked at me before he began worrying his fingernails from a force of habit. I couldn’t help but wrinkle my nose in distaste.

The others snickered quietly when Max cleared his throat disapprovingly. “That’s enough,” he demanded with more authority than I thought him capable of. “You all need to leave.”

The bare-chested and dark-haired man scoffed a derisive laugh, his eyes glittering like chips of onyx in the bright overhead lights. “Too bad you invited us in,” he challenged tauntingly, the connotation that buttressed the phrase equally as odd as the words used. I couldn’t help but glance back at Max to see his response to such a strange accusation? Threat? Jab?

“ _Now,_ ” Max growled venomously, pointing to the door. Thorn then barked, the sheer bestial ferocity of the threat making me jump in alarm.

Instead of leaving right away, the platinum blonde man who had so captivated me on the carousel looked from me to Max a few times, his eyebrow arching with silent questions. Apparently not finding the answers he wanted, the man shrugged ambivalently, completely unperturbed. “Let’s go,” he directed to his compatriots before turning unceremoniously on his heel and making his way out. The three other men followed suit without hesitation, each one looking at Max with threats veiled behind their pleasant smiles. As the bell over the door chimed a merry ‘goodbye’ to them, I let out a small yet shuddering sigh, the laden breath stuck in my chest for what felt like years.

“Some people’s kids,” Max sighed as the atmosphere in the VideoMax lightened considerably. On turning to face him, I found him scrutinizing the windows at my back, seemingly watching the retreating figures of the men he had just ejected from his store. He must have felt my eyes on him, for he quickly looked back to me and smiled gently as if he understood something I didn’t.

“Yeah, well… You know what they say about apples and trees,” I shrugged, trying to act indifferent despite the panic that still tickled at the bottom of my stomach. When the loud revving of motorcycle engines insinuated itself into the conversation, I couldn’t stop myself from turning my gaze once again to the parking lot to watch four menacing-looking machines speed off into the night.

“That’s very gracious of you,” Max mused as though I had made some sort of joke. He was looking at me thoughtfully when I turned to face him. I didn’t understand what he found so amusing.

“Not really,” I demurred politely, my concentration shifting downwards when Thorn head-butted my leg. I couldn’t stop myself from scratching him gently behind the ear when he sat beside me and pressed his weight into me. “I should get going, though,” I insisted after a moment, having nearly lost myself once again in the soothing feeling of Thorn’s fur under my fingers. “I think I saw a ‘No Loitering’ sign out front and I don’t want to upset management,” I joked. “He might try to give me more money.”

Max laughed heartily, shooing me away with a nod and a gentle gesture to the door. “Stay out of trouble,” he warned, back in full ‘dad’ mode.

“And if I can’t, I promise I won’t get caught. Thanks again,” I said sincerely before leaving.

I couldn’t get away from the VideoMax fast enough.

Even though I had _seen_ the four men ride off into the night in the opposite direction of where I was headed, the nagging feeling that I was being watched (or worse followed) lingered heavily at my back. I kept checking over my shoulder as I walked quickly through the dark streets, worried I might eventually see a figure (or four) behind me. Thankfully there was never anyone there, but I knew I couldn’t relax until I made it downtown where all of the nighttime crowds seemed to linger. Safety in numbers, my instincts repeated in tempo with the frantic pounding of my heart, the mantra a terrible reminder of the fear I had felt the night before. And as I finally dove into the streams of bodies that strolled on their inexorable journey past the isles of bars and restaurants toward the true beating boardwalk heart of Santa Carla, I finally felt protected. With one last cautious glance over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t being followed, I let out a shuddering sigh and shook my head to try and dislodge the irrational hysteria that had overtaken me.

Free to be reasonable again, the twenty-dollar weight in my pocket was suddenly too heavy to ignore and my stomach was snarling, upset with me that I had teased it with something as insubstantial as a sucker. Ducking into the first convenience store I found, I considered how best to spend Max’s ‘gift’ without blowing it stupidly all in one go. As much as the idea of pity money hurt my pride, I needed to make this twenty dollars last for as long as possible. So, even though I would have happily splurged on a one-time three-course meal, I forced myself away from the most expensive foodstuffs. As I drifted through the tiny store, trying to decide if chips, liquorice, or chocolate was a better purchase, I happened upon a small selection of personal hygiene products. Staring longingly at things like shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, and soap, I fantasied about how nice it would be to have a screaming-hot shower, to comb my hair, and to change my clothes… When my stomach decided to make its needs known yet again with an angry snarl. So, despondent, I forced myself to go back and grab a small package of jerky before shuffling my filthy self over to the cashier. I quickly slid my purchase and Max’s money across the counter.

“Do you want a bag for this?” The boy behind the counter asked, bored. I thought I saw him glance peculiarly at me from the corner of my eye as he made my change, but I decided to let it slide.

“No, thanks,” I answered, my mouth watering as I watched the cashier man-handle my supper.

“Twelve-twenty is your change,” the boy grunted, shoving my leftover money and jerky back towards me. He proceeded to ignore me immediately thereafter.

Scooping up my things, I stuffed the change away in my pocket and the beef jerky in my jacket before muttering a quick ‘thanks’ and leaving. The thought crossed my mind as I stepped back out into the night that I should have picked up a bottle of water, too, but I knew I couldn’t afford such a luxury—just like I couldn’t afford to throw away a dollar-seventy-five on a tube of toothpaste. Sure, the jerky I had bought wasn’t exactly ‘cheap’, but it would last me at least a few days or maybe more if I was prudent with it. Water, on the other hand, I was positive I could get for _free_ : there had to be public fountains (ugh, germs) somewhere in Santa Carla, especially near some of the more ‘touristy’ areas. And, hey, if that was true, it stood to reason that there might also be some freshwater showers down by the beaches. I’d been on enough vacations with my mom and Chris to know that most public beaches had showers of some description. They weren’t always of the private-stall variety, but they did exist. If push came to shove, I supposed I could withstand being naked in public for a chance to clean up a little. The water would also be freezing, but beggars can’t be choosers. I would have to wait until the very early morning to avoid prying eyes, but if I was really careful…

Lost in my schemings, I headed towards the outskirts of town and the _Chateau Felicia_ on autopilot until the familiar roar of motorcycle engines interrupted me. Stupidly, I turned around, walking backwards down the street, to see who was coming. Expecting the bikers to speed past me, I hustled closer to the curb, only to have them slow down to match my awkward backwards lope. Blinded by the headlights, I raised my arm to shield my eyes; I still had to squint to see much of anything. “Who’s there?” I called out defensively, the strain on my eyes coming through in my voice as I tried to identify the obscured figures before me. Still retreating, I managed to stumble over a crack in the pavement and nearly fall on my ass. As I lurched to a halt and collected my flailing self, the noise and the headlights from the motorcycles died.

“There you are,” a hauntingly familiar voice greeted me through the dark, the blackness more debilitating in the sudden absence of the bright headlights. Even so, I didn’t need to be able to see his face to know who it was.

Blinking furiously to try and adjust to the dark, I strained to meet the eyes I felt trained on me like the blades of two icy knives. “What do you want?” I asked brusquely, hoping that if I cut to the chase I might be left alone. “I only have twelve dollars on me, so if you’re looking for money—”

“—We don’t want your money,” the icy-eyed blonde from the boardwalk—and now the VideoMax—practically laughed. As my eyes slowly began to adjust to the dark, I could see that he was stopped just ahead of me, smirking at me as he sat astride a tricked-out vintage Triumph T100. I could also see that he was flanked by his three friends, each astride mean-looking machines that had been modified to match their punk aesthetic perfectly. There was no way I could outrun them all this time.

“Then what do you want?” I asked as calmly as I could despite the fact that my heart was now beating wildly in my chest. The precise, unblinking gaze that I found myself scrutinized under awoke the primal feelings of fear that I had come to know all too well in the last twenty-four hours.

“Nothing in particular,” the man continued, the eerily familiar tone of his voice nagging at me like an itch I couldn’t scratch. Why did I feel like I knew him? “You look like you need some help—you seem a little lost,” he continued when I didn’t say anything in return. The others laughed quietly as he spoke, taunting me. 

That’s a big assumption for you to make. “I’m not lost and I don’t need _your_ help,” I said flatly, returning his stare as confidently as I could. Shifting my posture, I stood up straight to try and look surer of myself. When I defiantly crossed my arms, the gorgeous blonde’s smirk exploded into a grin, sending an unbidden tidal wave of butterflies through me.

“There isn’t anything but empty houses around here,” the blonde man continued, his tone playfully condescending.

“And your point is...?” I asked, frowning with annoyance even though I felt the instinctual need to beg for my life. 

“Well, you took your shot, David,” the wild-haired blonde with the medallioned jacket observed with a chuckle from the immediate left of the man before me, “but I don’t think she likes you very much.”

 _… David_.

“Can it, Paul,” the slighter man with the curly hair reprimanded, the bright colours of his jacket somehow accurately reflected in the ostentatious racoon tail that dangled from his handlebars. When he caught me looking in his direction, he winked playfully before worrying his fingernails on his teeth, smiling around his hand.

… How did I _know_ that was his name?

“Make me, Marko,” the keen detective—‘Paul’, apparently—snapped back, earning himself a heavy elbow in the ribs from the man—Marko—on his left.

… Even though I’ve never met him before.

“Enough,” the imposing Native American man at the opposite end of the group barked, his position on his leader’s right not surprising.

… Why do I feel like I know him already?

“Fuck you, Dwayne,” Marko and Paul snapped in unison, forgetting their budding spat instantly. Had I not been so afraid, I might have found it comical.

“What do you want?” I asked again to the man on the Triumph—David. For a heartbeat, I considered trying to run, but as soon as the whim flashed through me, I knew it would be useless. So instead, I balled up my fists as tightly as I could, ready to come out swinging if need be. I had nothing else to defend myself with.

“Just your name,” David answered with a teasing smirk, the comfortable twist in his lips revealing that he was enjoying some private joke.

His statement caught me completely off guard. “What?”

“What’s your name?” David asked slowly, amused.

“Why would I tell you that?” I rebutted warily after almost letting lose that priceless secret without so much as a thought.

“Because you know mine. It’s only fair,” David reasoned suavely, clearly enjoying this conversation (if you could call it that).

Life isn’t fair, sunshine. Trust me: I could write a book on the subject. “That’s not my fault,” I countered again with a pointed glance at Paul, who grinned at me in return.

“Then because it’s the _polite_ thing to do,” David fired back in riposté, his determination unrelenting. 

I couldn’t help but laugh with a mixture of disbelief and, oddly enough, pleasure. Talking to a stranger like this had never felt so… _natural._ “Right,” I acquiesced sarcastically. “So I’m supposed to repay this harassment by being _polite_ to you?”

“Who’s it going to hurt?” David implored evenly, his icy-blue eyes boring intensely into mine. For another second, I nearly forgot my senses; I seemed to get lost in his gaze.

I gave my head a subtle shake to clear it and focus my wits. “Namely _me_ ,” I replied dryly.

David chuckled quietly as he rubbed his gloved hands together. “Don’t make me pick a name for you” he threatened impishly. “You might not like what I choose.”

I rolled my eyes, exasperated. “If I tell you, will you leave me alone?”

“No promises,” David purred as he relaxed nonchalantly on the handlebars of his Triumph, leaning forward ever so slightly as if to hear a whispered secret. “ _Tell me your name_ ,” he repeated gently, his voice soothing like honey, though I couldn’t help but notice the hint of command that his words carried with them. And for some stupid reason, I felt compelled to obey.

“Felicia,” I murmured, that precious word escaping my lips before I could think better of it.

“See?” David half-smiled victoriously. “That wasn’t so hard.” Here the others snickered amongst themselves as though a joke had been made at my expense. I felt my face flush with a mixture of embarrassment and anger.

“Well, since you got what you wanted,” I drawled as I cautiously took a half-step backwards, “I’m leaving.”

All of the other men—save David, oddly enough—laughed heartily, the sound sending my pulse galloping with renewed fear. “Why are you so eager to run away?” Marko asked with a strangely charming smile. “Hang with us for the night; you can ride with me.”

“As if, Marko: she’s _way_ out of your league,” Paul teased, earning himself a retaliatory jab in the shoulder from his friend. Here, Paul smiled at me with a little upwards man-nod of his head, the unspoken ‘hey’ as smooth and ineffective as John Travolta’s ‘charm’ in the phoney Danny scene from Grease. I gaged inwardly.

“What? You think _you_ stand a better chance?” The slighter boy asked sarcastically. Apparently, my reaction to Paul’s advances wasn’t as on the down-low as I had thought.

“ _Neither_ of you stand a chance, so shut up,” Dwayne cut in just as Paul opened his mouth to respond to Marko’s sneering retort. “David, hurry it up,” the tall, dark man brooded to close the matter completely. I would have sworn I saw him shift anxiously on his bike, but I couldn’t be sure under the harsh lighting of the street lamps.

When I felt David’s eyes slide from me to glare at his right-hand man, I decided to try pushing my luck. All four of the men seemed distracted momentarily, so I slowly and very carefully took a whole step backwards, placing my feet surely so I didn’t trip over myself. I was positive I had been quiet enough to not attract any attention, but the second my right foot contacted the pavement, David’s eyes snapped back onto me as though I had stomped it down. I froze, my heart galloping anew. How had he heard that?

“Going somewhere?” David asked coyly, his hand tightening over the throttle of his Triumph as though he knew I was trying to bolt. Suddenly, three other sets of eyes were trained back on me as well; I could feel their pointed stares like daggers at my throat.

“Yes, away from you,” I answered bluntly, my voice wavering ever so slightly. My outward show of cool confidence had been utterly betrayed by the fear that coursed through me like electricity.

David laughed, the strangely familiar sound deep and rich like melted dark chocolate. “Why?” He smiled, trying to charm me. I wish I could say that it was ineffective, but that would be a barefaced lie.

“Call me old fashioned, but I’m not in the habit of hanging around with strange men,” I said stiffly. Satisfaction flared through me when David’s face hardened: he was insulted.

“We won’t hurt you,” David implored, strangely polite as though he was genuinely wounded by my insinuations.

Liar. “Why don’t I believe you?” I glared, trying to keep myself focussed. I wasn’t going to let myself be fooled: something was off about these men. They were dangerous, even if they pretended not to be.

“Give me a chance to prove it,” David rebutted, his mood improving as quickly as it had soured.

“How?” I drawled flatly, trying to hide the temptation that tickled at my heart beneath an air of unimpressed scepticism. 

“I’ll take you for a ride,” David grinned roguishly, the subtle double entendre just smutty enough to make me blush.

I tried not to smile back, but the best I could do was to shake my head and scoff a quiet laugh to try and feign a modicum of decorum. “As tempting as your… _bike_ is,” I sighed coquettishly (sue me), “I should take a pass.” Truth be told, I was a little sad to be passing up the chance to go for a spin on the Triumph: the T100 had been my dream machine since I was ten. The fact that the man driving it wasn’t hard to look at didn’t hurt either, but I kept reminding myself that it wasn’t a good idea to run off into the night with a stranger—let alone _four_. And besides all of that, I scolded myself, I could feel it in my gut that something about these men made them dangerous, regardless of their humorous in-fighting and winsome smiles. I had no one looking out for me but myself (and maybe Max), so I had to be smart. I had to be careful. 

Cold frustration flashed through David’s eyes, dreadfully reaffirming my suspicions. As he then glanced away from me to stare blackly at something down the street, I suddenly felt I was being watched. When I flinched to look over my shoulder, David spoke to keep my attention. “‘Should’?” He asked, his voice tainted by a hint of urgency. “That’s not a definite ‘no’,” he grinned impishly, the darkness that had frozen his eyes melting away instantly.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I sallied, realising myself caught in another open-ended commitment that I had neither the intention nor obligation to make in the first place.

“Too late.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate—for you.”

“Not really: things have a habit of working out for me,” David cheeked.

“Then I’ll be all too happy to disappoint you,” I smarmed back.

David laughed quietly under his breath, looking at me as though I was a sight for sore eyes. I was mystified. “ _Come with me, Felicia,_ ” he half commanded, half politely asked.

And then came that feeling again: that loss of reason, that fuzzy compulsion to listen and _obey_. I stared back at David suspiciously, trying to hold on to my senses and shake off the dullness that was creeping over me—deadening my instincts, my intuition, and my will to resist. I nearly lost myself as I held David’s gaze, his eyes boring into me as though he was silently willing me to let go, to listen, to fold… Cramming my eyes shut, I shook my head to dislodge the sensation and instantly felt returned to myself. “No,” I spat forcefully, the small word nearly a curse. For a moment, David seemed stunned as though I had just slapped him across the face. The longer he stared at me, the more his brow furrowed with what I could only label as shocked disbelief.

“We need to go” Dwayne cut in suddenly, pulling his friend out of whatever spell I had inadvertently put him under. Until the interjection, I had (stupidly) forgotten that there were others around. Refocussed, I became hyperaware of those heavy, inquisitive stares that lingered on me as though I were some creature in a zoo. David seemed to have neglected our audience, too: he turned sharply to look at the man on his right as though he had almost been startled—which seemed out of character. The two men seemed to share some unspoken conversation before David nodded curtly in assent.

Turning back to face me, David’s face was fixed once again into its usual arrangement, his lips curled into a comfortable half-smirk that set his eyes alight with quiet confidence and mischief. “See you around,” he all but promised, the subtly warm timbre of his voice enough to make my stomach tickle with another wave of ridiculous schoolgirl butterflies.

“Hopefully not,” I lied awkwardly, earning a fleeting grin from the handsome man before me. Without another word, David and his faithful entourage kicked their motorcycles to life, the sudden cacophonous roar of the engines and the glare of their headlights stunning me. Temporarily blinded, it was all I could do to stand stock still, my eyes shielded by my hand, and try not to flinch as I felt the heavy machines blow past me. Left in a cloud of exhaust, I tried to follow the glow of taillights down the street, but they were already gone when my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the lamposts.

Letting out a shuddering breath as though I had just crossed paths with a pack of wolves, I ran my hands through my hair to try and steady myself. My heart was racing as I stood in the middle of the road, stupidly watching the distance as if I would suddenly be set upon again. But despite my fear, I knew I was alone—there was no far away rumbling of engines, no squealing of tires, no raucous laughing. Just the faint grumblings of the sea, the distant clamour of the boardwalk, and the low hum of the streetlights. I was as alone as I had ever been, except...

… Not. Something was watching me from the darkness at the end of the street.

Although I couldn’t see it, I could feel it—feel the eyes on my body, scrutinizing me as an owl would a mouse. Instantly, I was awash with dread. “Who’s there?” I barked shrilly, the ice in my chest coming through in my tone despite my best effort to sound assertive.

There came no response, yet somehow the quiet was worse.

I clenched my fists at my sides unsure of what else to do as my pulse galloped away with renewed intensity. I could practically feel the weighty stare that lingered on me like a spotlight—and perhaps that’s why I was suddenly so frozen, like a deer in the headlights. I wanted to turn and run, but my body wouldn’t obey, even though every inch of me was thrilling with energy. I felt I could have run to the moon if I wanted, but no matter how loudly my better sense screamed for me to move, to yell, to do something— _anything_ —I—

— ** _CRASH!_**

My stomach jumping into my throat, I yelped with surprise as I whirled around to see a dented and dulled silver trashcan rolling unceremoniously towards the middle of the street. As I stared, bewildered and startled, at the cause of such a commotion, I barely caught sight of a small cat running away from the scene of the crime. But by the time I had noticed it, the lithe little beast was already slipping away into the safety of the shadows and out of sight. Chest heaving, I focussed quickly back on the rolling garbage can as it settled with a hollow _clank_ near a manhole cover, only to frantically remember that I had more pressing things to be concerned about.

Spinning around like a top, I turned my attention back to that foreboding shadow that malingered at the end of the street. But as I stared once more into the darkness (fully expecting it to stare back into me), I felt… Nothing. No weighted stare on my person, no sharp gaze boring back into my eyes. I was alone. Truly. Completely. Alone.

Unnerved, I finally found the wherewithal to turn on my heel and run down the street (my tail firmly between my legs) towards my hovel. With every step, I couldn’t help but pray that whatever it was I had felt watching me from afar wasn’t wily enough to follow me ‘home’.


End file.
